Blog 2.0

Those of you who have been regular Deck Log followers have seen me discuss the mid-‘60’s phenomenon known as “Batmania” a few times.  It’s one of those things impossible to convey in the written word.  You had to experience it.  When the ABC network launched its new series Batman on 12 January 1966 . . . well, the phrase “overnight sensation” would not be an overstatement. 

Fads come and go, of course.  But normally they infect only a particular sub-set of society and that’s usually a segment of the younger generation.  Batmania was different.  It was one of those rare crazes that swept across the entire culture, regardless of age distinctions.  So, naturally, opportunists found a way to make a buck off of it.

Comics publishers weren’t the only folks to jump on board the super-hero gravy train inspired by the Bat-craze.  Television executives from rival broadcasters CBS and NBC set out to fashion their own super-hero spoofs and, hopefully, leech some of Batman’s ratings-smashing popularity to their own networks.

Comics enthusiasts occasionally discuss the coïncident timing which saw DC’s Doom Patrol and Marvel’s X-Men, two strikingly similar concepts, debut mere months apart in 1963.  And there were other curiously fortuitous instances of this kind, such as the Red Tornado/the Vision in 1968 and the Swamp Thing/the Man-Thing in 1971.

In the case of DC and Marvel, maybe it was happenstance, maybe it wasn’t.  But television has never been that coy about it.  Not only did CBS and NBC present the public with a pair of super-hero sitcoms featuring closely matching characters and premises, but they were introduced on the same night, 09 January 1967, and only a half-hour apart.  Like their spiritual progenitor, Batman, they were both mid-season replacement shows.  And that would not be the end to their parallels.

For those of you who, like me, were around then, this will bring back some memories.  Possibly, even fond ones.  For those of you who came in late, it should be an interesting glimpse of television’s own Silver Age of super-heroes.

A Scientist, Both Wise and Bold, Set Out to Cure the Common Cold;

Instead, He Found This Power Pill . . . .

The first of these Batman wanna-bes was shown on Monday nights, at eight p.m.  (I won’t go into what it says about my brain that I remembered the day of the week without having to consult a 1967 calendar.)  This was the CBS product and it was titled Mr. Terrific, and if you’re thinking that it was about the old DC hero, Terry Sloan, the Man of a Thousand Talents, you’re wrong.  It would probably have been a better show if it had been.

Of the two super-hero send-ups produced by CBS and NBC, this one was, technically, first---and not just because it aired a half-hour before NBC’s effort.  In the summer of 1966, the Tiffany Network had already turned its eye toward producing a Batman clone.  The result was a pilot starring Alan Young, coming off a successful run in Mr. Ed, as Stanley H. Beamish, a nebbishy department-store clerk.  As the plot relates, the efforts of a government laboratory have resulted in the creation of a pill which will bestow a human being with the basic array of Superman-like powers---super-strength, invulnerability, flight, super-speed, and X-ray vision.  Hilarity ensues when it’s discovered that the only person the pill will work on is Stanley Beamish.

As Beamish, Alan Young was clumsy and addle-brained, kind of a dumber version of Wilbur Post.  Young is a talented actor, as was Edward Andrews, who played the head of the government bureau in charge of the super-power pill.  But here, they both played their parts too broadly, and frankly, the script didn’t give them a whole lot to work with.  It was an embarrassment to all involved, and CBS wisely passed on it.

That would have been that for TV’s Mr. Terrific---except that a few months later, CBS got wind that NBC was busy producing its own super-hero satire and the buzz was that it was pretty good.  Not wanting to be left in the lurch, it locked some writers in a room and told them they couldn’t come out until they fixed Mr. Terrific.  The result was a revamp with about as much housecleaning as Julius Schwartz’ revival of the Flash.

The premise---that a “power pill” would give super-powers to only one man---was retained, as was the name of that fateful subject, Stanley Beamish.  Aside from that, everything else, including the cast, was changed.  Now, Stanley Beamish, played by Stephen Strimpell, was half-owner of a small-time garage and filling station.  Where Stanley is meek and mild, his partner and best friend, Hal Walters (Dick Gautier, best remembered as “Hymie the Robot”, from Get Smart), is self-confident and an inveterate skirt chaser.

When a government scientist invents the power pill---accidentally this time, instead of on purpose---the Bureau of Special Projects determines that the only subject in all the country that the pill will affect is Stanley Beamish.  Barton J. Reed (John McGiver), head of the Bureau, and his aide, Harley Trent (Paul Smith), seek out Stanley and recruit him into super-powered government service.  Stanley must keep his rôle as a super-hero secret from everyone, including Hal.

Instead of the ridiculous costume worn by Alan Young in the pilot, which resembled an old-fashioned deep-sea diver’s suit painted gold (and probably was), the new Mr. Terrific costume showed a bit more decorum:  a gold-lamé jacket, which reversed into a regular sport coat, so Stanley could hang it up in his locker at the garage; and an aviator’s scarf and goggles.

In his portrayal of Beamish, Stephen Strimpell was more subdued than Young.  Strimpell’s Beamish was impish and easy going, but didn’t come across as a total nimrod.  Clearly he was out of his depth performing espionage work for the government and often screwed up because of that, but it never devolved into the can’t-walk-and-chew-gum-at-the-same-time level.

The same kind of restraint was shown in the characters of Reed and Trent.  While they occasionally displayed moments of childishness---generally, to accommodate the insertion of a joke---they usually came across as competent.  Or, at least, sitcom competent.

When assigned to a mission, Beamish would be provided with three power pills---one large white one, which rendered him super-powered for one hour; and two small, red pills, which were ten-minute “boosters”.  This was the “maximum dosage”, after which Stanley would have to wait an unspecified amount of time before taking any more power pills.

The need to take to pills to become super-powered and the imposed time-limits served as a major source of drama and comedy in the series.  Frequently, Stanley would drop one of the pills, or it would wear off, at the worst possible time.

The writers had generally done well in revising the series.  They had certainly moved it a notch or two up from the pilot.  There was just one problem . . . .

It wasn’t funny.  It was silly; it was whacky; it was lighthearted fluff, but it wasn’t funny.  And it sure didn’t drag in anywhere near the audience that Batman did.

Mr. Terrific’s competitor over at NBC wasn’t that funny either, which was astounding, considering its pedigree.

Look!  It’s the Man Who Flies Around Like an Eagle!

Look!  It’s the Enemy of All That’s Illegal!

As soon as the closing credits had rolled on the adventures of power-pill-popping Stanley Beamish, it was eight-thirty, and time to switch the channel to NBC and catch its super-hero spoof, about a mild-mannered man who gains super-powers by ingesting a chemical substance.  Only this one was different:  instead of swallowing a pill, he drinks a potion!

O.K., there were more differences than that, but not enough.

The Peacock Network’s foray into super-hero farce was called Captain Nice.  This was the show that spooked CBS into resurrecting Mr. Terrific.  And no wonder. It was created by and written by and executive produced by Buck Henry, one of the comic geniuses behind Get Smart.  And it was directed by Jay Sandrich, who also directed Get Smart and would go on to helm Mary Tyler Moore for most of its run and the first three seasons of The Cosby Show.

Unlike Mr. Terrific’s premiere episode, which began with the format already in place (relying on Paul Frees’s rhyming narration in the opening credit sequence to bring the viewers up to speed), Captain Nice kicked off with his origin. 

In the beginning, our hero is Carter Nash, police chemist for the Big Town Police Department and general all-around nerd.  Nash is played by William Daniels.  (Yes, that William Daniels.)  He lives in his parents’ house and under the thumb of his gently domineering mother (Alice Ghostly).  Though he owes his position on the police department to his uncle, the mayor of Big Town, the meek, socially awkward Nash is actually a quite capable chemist.

Through research and experimentation, Nash succeeds in his goal of developing a serum that imbues whomever drinks it with the usual set of super-powers---super-strength, invulnerability, flight.  (No super-vision, though.)  Unfortunately, this comes in the middle of a crisis---master criminal Omnus has escaped from prison and is loose in Big Town---and the mayor and the police chief have no time for Nash’s boring recitations.

Dejected, Carter returns to his lab and pockets the phial of “super-juice”.

In one of those situations that exists only in sitcoms, the meek Nash is the romantic interest of tall, willowy, attractive policewoman Sergeant Candy Kane (Ann Prentiss, sister of Paula).  She aggressively pursues the shy chemist, who is befuddled by her attentions.  She inveigles Carter into walking her home through the local park.  Unfortunately, they stumble across the fugitive Omnus and his gang.  The hoods overpower Nash and kidnap Candy.

With no other option, Carter drinks the sample of the formula he has with him.  It works, but the explosive release of power shreds his outer clothing, leaving him in tatters and his long johns.  He stumblingly rescues Candy and captures Omnus and his henchmen; “stumblingly” because he doesn’t know how to manage his newfound strength.  A park employee who witnessed his feats notes the “CN” monogram on Nash’s belt buckle and asks him what the initials stand for.

“Uh . . . Captain,” he replies.

“Captain what?”

“Captain . . . Nice.”

When Carter returns home, he tells his parents about the formula, deciding to destroy his notes so it won’t fall into the wrong hands.  Instead, his mother persuades (read: orders) him to fight crime as a super-hero.  Using old sheets and some curtain remnants, she redesigns his long johns into an ill-fitting costume and Captain Nice, hero of Big Town, is born!

Despite the difference in set-ups, Captain Nice was pretty much Mr. Terrific separated at birth.  Taking the super-juice did nothing to remedy Nash’s shyness or awkwardness.  As with Mr. Terrific, the Captain’s inability to hold his super-strength in check inadvertently resulted in more damage than would have been caused by the bad guys he caught.  Also like Terrific, Captain Nice had difficulty manuœvering himself in flight and his landings invariably smashed walls or gouged pavement.

In another echo of Mr. Terrific, the effects of the super-juice lasted for only an hour, so all too often, Captain Nice reverted back to his non-powered self at inopportune times.  On the other hand, one marked difference was, while the power pills worked only on Stanley Beamish, Nash’s formula would work on anybody.  A couple of episodes had Captain Nice dealing with someone else who had drunk the stuff.

Buck Henry’s fingerprints were all over the Captain Nice series.  His taste for quirky villains.  His overuse of catchphrases, some of which---the old “I asked you not to tell me that” gag, for example---were lifted straight out of Get Smart. 

And his reliance on running gags.  The most notable of these in Captain Nice was the fact that Carter Nash’s father was always shown reading a newspaper which concealed his face.  He spoke only rarely, but when he did, sharp-eared viewers could recognize the voice of long-time character actor Byron Foulger.

Curiously though, these things, which had helped make Get Smart such a hit, fell flat on Captain Nice.  The humor never quite seemed to gel.  If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the reason for that was the fact that the character dynamics in Captain Nice were an inversion of those in Get Smart.

Maxwell Smart was arrogant, pompous, and completely unaware of his own ineptitude.  This made him both a foil for the madcap events around him and a source of them.  But Carter Nash, unlike most goofy characters on television, was self-conscious about his shortcomings.  His flaws might have been mildly humorous in and of themselves, but they also made Nash sympathetic.  He came across as a victim of the zaniness, rather than a part of it.  That made it hard to laugh at him.

That might have been one of the reasons that Captain Nice failed to attract an audience.  Like Mr. Terrific, the show limped along for half a season, then finished out the year in reruns.

What Went Wrong?

I wasn’t about to write this entry based only on recollexions that were forty-four years old.  Fortunately, the original Alan Young pilot for Mr. Terrific is available for viewing on line.  So are the first episodes of both series, along with excerpts of the others.  I watched all of these, not only to confirm my rote memories, but to be able to evaluate the shows from an adult perspective.

Here’s what I found.

There was nothing wrong with the acting, on either series.  The regular players in both shows delivered measured, competent performances.  Granted, there was no stretching or going against type.  We’re not talking Anthony Hopkins here.  The character actors stayed strictly within their established personas.  That’s not a criticism; they were matched to specific rôles and played them well.  There was no scenery chewing or over-the-top emoting.

The two leads---Stephen Strimpell, on Mr. Terrific, and William Daniels, on Captain Nice---approached their similar characters differently, but effectively.  Strimpell’s Stanley Beamish was whimsical, evoking a childlike sense of fun.  Daniels, as Carter Nash/Captain Nice, was adjusted to his shyness and social geekdom.  He brought a certain dignity to the character.  Neither of the two heroes was a buffoon.

The problem, as I saw it, lied in the writing.  I once stated the term “situation comedy” can be broken down in two ways:  “situation comedy”, in which the humour comes from the dialogue and the character interaction, with the situation being almost incidental; and “situation comedy”, in which the yuks are supposed to come from the whacky or outlandish situation and the characters’ response to it.

Mr. Terrific and Captain Nice both fell into the latter camp (though Captain Nice tried a little harder to bring in some of the elements of the first category, too).  Unfortunately, the situations presented in the two shows were tepid and predictable.  Captain Nice rips the door off the mayor’s office because he doesn’t know his own strength. Har har har.  Mr. Terrific misses the window of Bureau Chief Reed’s office and flies through the wall.  Ho ho ho.  Not only predictable, but repetitive, for these sort of things, with only minor variations, happened over and over.  The plots were little more than frameworks to move the hero from one of these set-pieces to the next.

As I mentioned earlier, the time limits on their super-powers was a convenient device to create situations where the hero’s powers suddenly fade away and he has to face his enemies as his normal inept self.  This quickly became a crutch for writers stuck for an amusing scene.  Few episodes failed to contain a sequence in which poor Stanley or poor Carter found himself powerless in front of a gang of bank robbers or a nest of hostile spies.  Or while in mid-air.  (Going by the shows, anyone watching would think that, in 1967, the United States was covered with haystacks.)

This sort of thing, especially if done right, can be funny once or twice.  But it wears out its welcome pretty fast after that.

It didn’t take long for me to develop an admiration for the actors’ professionalism.  They had been handed listless, carbon-copy scripts and they were doing the best they could to make them work.

No doubt the CBS and NBC folks were confounded as to why their super-hero spoofs weren’t rising to the popularity of Batman.  That was because their producers had completely missed the element that had made Batman such an effective satire.

The Batman television series simply took comic-book super-hero conventions and exaggerated them.  This was brilliant because it worked on two levels.  The kids enjoyed the show as a straight adventure, while the adults recognised the absurdity inherent in the super-hero concept.  They chuckled at the seemingly endless supply of gadgets that the Caped Crusader pulled out of his utility belt or his lectures to Robin on the importance of good citizenship while they were bat-climbing a wall.

Where Batman made super-heroes funny, Mr. Terrific and Captain Nice tried to make funny super-heroes.

The last culprit in the early demise of Mr. Terrific and Captain Nice was, I suspect, the fact that the suits at CBS and NBC didn’t want to devote more money or time than was necessary into developing their respective series.  They didn’t expect to have to.  They figured any programme that looked like Batman would be as popular as Batman.

They misjudged the timing, too.  Fads, by their very definition, have a short shelf life.  Batmania had peaked and was winding down.  By the time their super-hero spoofs hit the airwaves, it was “been there, done that” as far as the viewing public was concerned.

Both Mr. Terrific and Captain Nice ended, with their last rerun episodes, on the same day---28 August 1967.  Together at birth, together at death.

If it was any consolation, Batman---the series they had tried so hard to copy---would reach its end a mere seven months later.  And the Bat-craze would become a Bat-memory.

I came to Marvel Comics late in the game.  While I had been reading DC’s comics since the beginning of the Silver Age, I didn’t tumble to Marvel until about 1965.  Oh, I had seen Marvel Comics.  There had been a few lying around the barber shop where I got my hair cut.  I had taken a look at them, didn’t recognise any of the characters, and tossed them aside.

It was The Avengers that finally drew my attention to Marvel.  I’ve always been a sucker for super-hero teams, and by then, I was able to wrap my brain around the idea of different publishers with different super-heroes.  After all, I had had no problem distinguishing between Earth-One and Earth-Two, so I came to view Marvel’s heroes as belonging to yet another parallel world.

Unlike many of my contemporaries, I didn’t rave over Marvel’s different approach to super-heroes.  It was different, of course, and interesting, but frankly, I was a bit uncomfortable with the “fuzziness” with which Marvel looked at most super-hero conventions.  DC’s super-hero universe was far more orderly.  The rules were the rules.  Marvel seemed to play fast and loose with them.  The Avengers would walk around their headquarters with their masks off and calling each other by their first names.  You never saw that in the JLA. 

DC's heroes had specific weaknesses.  Superman had kryptonite, magic, and red and green suns; J’onn J’onzz had fire; Green Lantern’s ring was thwarted by the colour yellow.  Other than those, they were good to go.  But you couldn’t be sure what would take out a Marvel hero and what wouldn’t.  Thor had that sixty-seconds-without-his-hammer-would-turn-him-back-to-Don-Blake thing going on, but that was the only weakness set in stone.  The vulnerabilities of other Marvel heroes seemed less absolute, more easily sidestepped.

Given my preference for uniformity, it’s a curious quirk that one of the Marvel heroes I enjoyed most, my favourite Avenger after Captain America, was Giant-Man.  When I went back and captured back issues of Marvel Comics, so I could be up to speed on its super-hero universe, the first old issues I strived to obtain were The Avengers and the Tales to Astonish issues featuring Giant-Man.  I was surprised to discover how many ways the character had changed, in both powers and costumes and sobriquets.  Clearly, Henry Pym was the most mutable super-hero in the business.

Not that in the more regimented DC universe were changes in costume or powers or names never seen, but it was rare.  Seldom was a hero’s costume altered completely.  Yeah, the Blackhawks did, the Challengers did; but they were second-tier titles.  As far as the starring heroes went, you had the change to Batman’s chest emblem---which was big news---and Gil Kane’s tinkering with the arrangement of green and black on Green Lantern’s uniform.  That was about it.

Changes in name?  The only place that happened was in the Legion of Super-Heroes.  Lightning Lass became Light Lass; Triplicate Girl to Duo Damsel; Lone Wolf to Timber Wolf.  And a DC hero’s powers were almost never messed with for more than just the plot of one issue.  The only permanent examples I can think of were, again, in the Legion, with Light Lass and Ultra Boy. 

But Giant-Man, or Ant-Man, or whomever---in any given story featuring him, you never were sure just what cognomen, what costume, or what powers he was going to have.  Other Marvel heroes would change, but never so often or so quickly.  And when one thinks about it, it made sense.  Henry Pym was a research scientist, and apparently one with independent wealth, so he didn’t have to worry about anything but spending time in his laboratory.  (In fact, going by the stories, he practically lived in his lab.)  The most logical thing for him to do would be to continually develop and refine his powers and abilities, the same as Tony Stark constantly upgraded his armour.

The Ant-Man series started off specifically enough, in Tales to Astonish # 35 (Sep., 1962).  Stan Lee took the protagonist from an earlier tale when Tales to Astonish was a “creature feature” comic---Henry Pym, a scientist who had inadvertently shrunk himself to the size of an ant.  In that first appearance, Pym had not been intended to be a super-hero, but merely one of the dozens of unremarkable ordinary-citizen heroes to prevail over “science gone wrong”.  Thus, Stan caught a break when he decided to turn Pym into a costumed good guy.  Pym’s method of shrinking had come from a serum.  By happy circumstance, this method of reduction was sufficiently different from either DC’s the Atom, who relied on white dwarf star matter to shrink, or the Golden-Age Doll Man, who pulled the same stunt by “concentrating his supreme powers of will”, that Stan could legitimately claim he was not copying either previous hero.

The next thing to do was give the new hero an appropriately “miniature” name.  With atoms and dolls already taken, Stan christened his shrinking star “the Ant-Man” and designed him around an insect motif. 

The Ant-Man’s costume consisted of a silver helmet with antennae and a red-and-blue costume with black designs on the front in an abstraction of an ant’s segmented body.  Thanks to the cybernetic circuits installed in the helmet, the Ant-Man could communicate with real Hymenoptera formicidae.  While at ant size, it was established, Pym retained his normal-sized strength (pretty much a necessity for shrinking heroes).  When called into action, Pym suited up, drank some of his reducing serum, and summoned a flying ant for transportation.

The first change came in the very next story, in TTA # 36 (Oct., 1962)---when Pym converted his reducing and expanding sera to gases and compressed them into twin cylinders he wore attached to the belt of his Ant-Man costume.   This wasn’t so much a change, though, as it was a refinement, much in the way Ray Palmer added remote size-and-weight controls to his gloves in The Atom # 19 (Jun.-Jul., 1965).  This, logically, would have been the next step of development for a researching scientist and it didn’t change the essential premise of the series.  Pym still shrank, talked to ants, etc.

The series rolled along on that premise for the next dozen issues.  (My hunch is most fans don’t realise that Pym went that long with the Ant-Man as his sole super-hero identity.)  He picked up Janet van Dyne---the wonderful Wasp---as his partner in TTA # 44 (Jan., 1963), but his character remained unchanged.  In fact, the Wasp’s light-heartedness underscored Pym’s blandness. Previously, the lack of characterisation had been a consequence of his plot-driven series.  Now, his stodginess became a deliberate aspect of his personality.

In the fall of ’63, Stan Lee cranked out Marvel’s answer to DC’s Justice League of America with The Avengers.  For the team’s starting line-up, Stan chose two of his headliners---Iron Man and Thor---along with the Hulk, a character for whom the smilin’ editor had plans.  To round out the group, he was forced to drop to his second-tier roster and selected the Ant-Man and the Wasp.

One of the first things that must have occurred to Lee was that it made no sense for a super-team to have two members who could do little more than shrink to the size of insects.  That meant a revamp was in order for the boring-as-oatmeal Henry Pym.

                                                                        
Stan managed to squeeze that Big Change into Tales to Astonish # 49 (Nov., 1963), before the second issue of The Avengers hit the stands.

In “The Birth of Giant-Man”, we learn that Pym has been seeking to ramp up his act.  Step one:  he has further refined his size-control method, inserting his reducing and enlarging potions into capsules he can ingest orally.  Step two:  he has increased the potency of his enlarging fluid, enabling him to exceed his normal human size.

In the first self-test of his new growth serum, Hank screws up and takes too great a dosage.  He shoots up thirty feet, smashing through the walls of his New Jersey home.  Too weak to move his own body, he lays helplessly in the rubble until the Wasp can slip him a reducing capsule.

(Those in the Hank-Pym’s-mental-problems-began-with-his-insecurity-over-being-a-foul-up-as-a-scientist camp---which I am not---point to this episode as validation.)

After some experimentation, Pym discovers that twelve feet is his optimum size.  At that height, his strength increases, making him capable of pressing a ton.  He can grow larger; however, if he does so, it weakens him proportionately.  (Which is a touch I liked; it was a left-handed acknowledgement of the square-cube law.) 

With the bugs worked out, Hank adopts a second super-hero identity as Giant-Man.  Almost immediately, his rôle as Ant-Man is shoved into the back seat.

To me, this was a novel thing, indeed.  Since I rather backed into Marvel’s early history, I knew Pym as a giant before I knew that he had an alternate identity of Ant-Man.  I had never heard of a character having two different super-hero identities simultaneously.  It wasn’t quite the same thing as the hero possessing the ability to change his size either up or down; the scripts constantly referred Pym “becoming Ant-Man” or “changing back to Giant-Man.” 

This was also the beginning of many costume changes for the Master of Many Sizes, as he exchanged his clunky silver helmet for a simple red cowl with antennae.  Other than that, his costume remained essentially unaltered, except that the black pattern on his chest eventually shifted its aspect from that of a segmented ant to one of a pair of suspenders.  When fans think of Giant-Man, this is the version they remember.

The next development snuck in almost unnoticed, when in TTA # 59 (Sep., 1964), it was established that Giant-Man no longer needed the capsules to change his size.  Frequent use of the pills now permitted him to change height by mental command.

And that brings me to the Giant-Man everybody forgets.  Everybody wants to forget, more likely.

In TTA # 65 (Mar., 1965), Henry Pym creates an ultra-cybernetic device which gives him the ability to mentally control the size of other living things.  The design of the device requires a modification---something along the lines of an ancient battle helmet---which he fits over the cowl of his Giant-Man outfit.  To match the new appearance of his headgear, Jan insists on making him a new costume.  She calls his current costume “atrocious”, but it’s a bit calling the kettle black, since the new one she comes up would’ve given Bill Blass nightmares.

Jan essentially fits a black sweater-vest over the costume’s torso, then adds a blue shoulder assembly with flared ends.  It’s bad---real bad.  (In all fairness, it’s Pym’s new helmet-cowl that sends it over the edge.)  Unfortunately, by his own admission, he’s a scientist, not a fashion model, so he wears the damn thing.

But not for long.  Giant-Man’s days as an active Marvel super-hero were numbered.  In The Avengers # 16 (May, 1965), he and Jan, along with the other two remaining charter members, decide to take a break from Avengering.  Then his own solo series ends with Tales to Astonish # 69 (Jul., 1965).

In less than three years, Henry Pym had gone through two super-hero identities, three costumes, and several adjustments of his powers. 

It’s often commented that writers of super-hero team books prefer to cast heroes who do not have their own series.  Team members with their own series impose a status quo that the team-book writer cannot step outside.  With team members who have no other exposure, the writer is free to experiment with their personalities, relationships, and premises.  The demise of Giant-Man’s TTA series probably accounts for why he and the Wasp were the first original Assemblers to return to the team.

Only a year after taking their leaves, Hank and Jan returned to the Avengers.  Kicking off a running plotline that begins in Tales to Astonish # 77 (Mar., 1966), the Sub-Mariner disrupts an ocean-bed drilling operation overseen by Pym.  When the hostile Namor abandons the station to head for New York, Hank orders Jan to follow as the Wasp. This ultimately draws her into the clutches of the sinister Collector. 

In The Avengers # 28 (May, 1966), Hank rings in the Avengers’ help to rescue her by revealing his identity as Giant-Man.  After satisfying Captain America with his bona fides, Pym makes a revelation.  The principal reason he left the Avengers was because he discovered that his frequent size-changes were putting a potentially lethal strain on his body.  He has limits, now.  Hank can no longer vary his sizes; he can achieve only one height, that of twenty-five feet, and he must remain at that height for fifteen minutes exactly.  If he attempts to return to his normal size before or after that, the strain may be deadly.

If the Scarlet Witch had done nothing else for the Avengers or the world, she would be regarded as a heroine for sewing a new costume for Hank, “in case [he] ever did return”.  (Seriously, that girl had no social life.)  Wanda’s design is reminiscent of the first Giant-Man costume, but in blue and yellow and with more elegant lines.  When Hank shoots up to his twenty-five foot size, Cap remarks, “You’re a real Goliath!”   And as easy as that, Pym discards the name “Giant-Man” and becomes Goliath.

It’s not too hard for the Assemblers to track down the villain’s secret hide-out, and an enraged Goliath keeps the Collector on the run.  But in the end, good old Avenger teamwork rescues Jan.  In the heat of battle, though, Goliath overstays his fifteen-minute time limit and, when he tries to return to normal height, he stops at ten feet and passes out.

Goliath awakens several hours later, and a medical analysis determines that he is stuck at a ten-foot height permanently.  Trapped in a World Too Small for Him became his Marvel “handicap”, good for the hand-wringing that Stan Lee liked to insert in all of his titles.  After a few issues, Captain America gets tired of Hank’s “poor me” whining and delivers one of his patented star-spangled pep talks.  Freshly motivated, Pym hunkers down and seeks a cure for his condition, with the help of his new assistant, Doctor Bill Foster.

All the sweat pays off when their experiments finally restore Goliath’s ability to return to normal height in The Avengers # 35 (Dec., 1966).  As a bonus, Pym regains his full range of size control and he can once again become the Ant-Man.

Though Hank’s plight of being stuck at ten feet tall didn’t last all that long, it introduced the notion that his constant size-changing had a detrimental effect on his body, a concept which would resurface many times.  In fact, it didn’t take that long to crop up, again.  Though able to grow or shrink at will once more, Goliath tended to stick to a ten-foot height while in action.  In The Avengers # 48 (Jan., 1967), he is forced to shoot up to twenty-five feet in order to save some bystanders from a plummeting chunk of stone.  Even as he does so, Hank thinks, “I’ve been warned not to . . . it might permanently affect my ability to grow in size.”  Pulling off the save, he manages to shrink back to normal size with apparently no ill effects.

The next two issues are plotted slyly.  Events transpire in such a fashion that Pym has to employ only his Ant-Man identity.  He never grows above normal size.  But so neatly did that fit into the plot that it gets completely by the reader, until Hank himself lays it out:  “Years of fantastic strain on my very molecules---plus the recent overtaxing of my size-changing powers---have finally had their effect on me!  Though I can still become Ant-Man . . . I can no longer become a ten-foot giant!”

The way Pym’s powers came and went, the readers were probably a lot less concerned about it than he was.  And sure enough, two issues after losing his power to grow, Goliath gets it back---at the hands of the Collector, no less, who wants a flawless set of Avengers to add to his acquisitions.  Not only can the new, improved Hank resume his usual ten-foot height, he can now safely increase to a height of twenty-five feet for brief periods.

It couldn't have been more than a mild surprise that the story contained yet another costume change for Goliath.  It wasn’t shown on the cover, probably because it wasn’t much of one; just an alteration in the colour scheme, the blue-yellow becoming red-blue.

By now, the Master of Many Sizes was becoming Who Am I This Week?  Henry Pym had gone through all the permutations of his identities.  Ant-Man only.  Goliath only.  Both.  Neither.  It was growing wearisome.  Hank’s most recent problems with his powers had come from writer Roy Thomas, whose back-and-forth handling of them suggested that he didn’t know what to do with the character.

For the next several issues, Goliath put in solid, reliable service with the Avengers, while the focus shifted to new members the Black Panther and the Vision.  But soon enough, the writers would jigger Henry Pym once again.  Only this time, there was none of the “Ant-Man only” or “Goliath only” nonsense.  The end of the Silver Age brought Pym the most dramatic change of all.

An accident in his lab exposes Hank to a combination of unknown gases which cause him to experience a personality shift.  Pym adopts the completely new identity of Yellowjacket.  No longer aware that he himself was Goliath, he informs the Avengers that he has killed the giant-sized hero.  Furthermore, he kidnaps the Wasp and intends to marry her.  In short, as Yellowjacket, Pym was acting out his sub-conscious desires.

All becomes clear immediately following the wedding of Yellowjacket and Janet van Dyne, in The Avengers # 60 (Jan., 1969).  When the Circus of Crime attacks during the reception, the Wasp is imperiled.  Seeing Jan in danger restores Pym’s mind to normal, and once the heroes have put paid to the threat of the villains, Hank and Jan happily agree to let the marriage stand.  Particularly, Jan, as she had tumbled to the fact that her kidnapper was an off-his-nut Hank and went along with the wedding plans just so she could finally get him to the altar. 

Citing the medical dangers of constantly enlarging his body, Pym decides to remain Yellowjacket permanently.

Yellowjacket was essentially the Ant-Man with some factory-installed extras.  His yellow-and-black costume included artificial wings which permitted him to fly while insect sized.  Devices installed in his gloves enabled him to deliver electrical jolts in the fashion of “stings”.

Changing Goliath to Yellowjacket marked an axial shift in the Avengers for me.  As far as I was concerned, his oversized presence on the team was as integral as that of Captain America.  And I wasn’t placated when, a few issues later, Hawkeye abandoned his bow to become the new Goliath.  It was a move that seemed forced and wasteful to boot.  Why have one Avenger who could shrink and another who could grow, when there used to be one hero in the group who could do both? 

Whether he was Ant-Man or Giant-Man, as a solo act, Henry Pym was always a second-string hero.  But as an Avenger, he was a cornerstone of the team for years, despite the way writers would tinker with his powers.  That’s the way those of us who read his adventures ‘way back then saw it, and removing Goliath from the team was, for me, one of the strong Marvel indicators that the Silver Age was over.

As promised, time for the answers to my DC Silver-Age quiz of two weeks ago.   Not as many hardy souls posted in response this time around.  Luke Blanchard and Prince Hal took excellent stabs at it, and Randomnole came through with one solid answer.

I was impressed with the high number of correct answers these gents provided.  Many of the questions I deliberately chose to play on common misconceptions, with the expectation that many would follow the path of those mistaken notions.  However, neither Luke nor Hal were taken in by most of the tricky ones.  And the single poser that Randomnole addressed was nailed spot-on before anyone else provided the correct answer.  So good on all of them!

That said, no-one got all of them correct, nor did they as a group.  The right response to one of the questions eluded everyone.

That takes care of the commentary; now, on to the answers!

ANSWERS TO THE SILVER-AGE CHALLENGE---DC EDITION II:

1.  Of the five services of the U.S. Armed Forces (Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard), which one did Wonder Woman join as Diana Prince?

Diana (Wonder Woman) Prince was a lieutenant in the United States Army.

Both Luke Blanchard and Prince Hal got this one correct---but Luke arrived at the right answer through a means that I hadn’t considered.

In 1966, Wonder Woman editor Robert Kanigher undertook an interesting experiment with the series.  Beginning with issue # 159 (Jan., 1966), the adventures of the Amazing Amazon were given a retrofit, evoking the early roots of the character.  Wonder Woman’s origin was retold, as well as her first encounter with Steve Trevor.

Regular artists Ross Andru and Mike Esposito mimicked the style of Harry G. Peter, the super-heroine’s Golden-Age artist, and depicted the characters in their 1940’s fashion.  Trevor was again a captain and wore a World War II-vintage Army aviator’s uniform.  The hair of Diana's queen-mother changed from blonde to black, as it had been back in the ‘40’s, and her name returned to its original spelling of Hippolyte—with an “e”.

Subsequent stories depicted Wonder Woman assuming the identity of Diana Prince, a U.S. Army nurse, matching the events told in Sensation Comics # 1 (Jan., 1942).

Kanigher’s “blast from the past” experiment ended with issue # 165 (Oct., 1966).  The following issue resumed telling Wonder Woman tales in the modern style.  (But with typical Kanigher confusion, some elements of the retro period were retained, such as there being a real Diana Prince, who appeared in issue # 167 [Jan., 1967].)

I had forgotten about this period in the Silver-Age Wonder Woman’s history when I ginned up the question about Diana’s military service.  Luke didn’t, though, and from it derived the correct answer.  And it counts.  It meets all the criteria I set down for correct responses.

The source of the correct answer I had in mind stemmed from the first Silver-Age rebooting of the Amazing Amazon’s origin, which was seen in Wonder Woman # 98 (May, 1958).  In the next issue, # 99, the story “Top Secret” tells how W.W. assumed the identity of Diana Prince, and it concludes with her being awarded a commission as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army. 

How do we know she is in the Army?  Because she is assigned to Military Intelligence, an Army command.

2.  What was the name of the asteroid where the ancestral home of Bron Wayn E7705---the Batman of 2967---was located?

Baltorr.

(Chuckle!)   I’ll bet this one had a lot of you going back through my recent Deck Log archive entry on the Superman of 2965, to see if I had named it in the section that discussed World’s Finest Comics # 166 (May, 1967).  Well, I didn’t.

This was one of the more straight-forward questions.  The only way to learn the answer was to go through that story, which provided the origin of the Batman of the thirtieth century, and find the one panel in which the name of the asteroid is mentioned.  Something which Prince Hal obviously did, because he got it right.

3.  Who starred as Green Lantern in the Earth-One series about the Emerald Crusader?

Another straight-forward one which both Luke and Hal got right.  It was Charles “Good Time Charlie” Vicker, whom we met in the two-part epic told in Green Lantern 55-6 (Sep. and Oct., 1967).  Charlie ended up trading in his TV-star status for a power ring, when he became a Green Lantern himself.

 4.  Speaking of television shows, what was the name of the television programme regularly hosted by Lana Lang for WMET-TV?

Among her other on-camera duties for WMET-TV, Lana Lang hosted the television series I Remember Superboy, as seen or mentioned in a few issues of Lois Lane, such as # 55 and # 60 (Feb. and Oct., 1965).

Luke answered this one correctly, and Hal agreed.

5.  In what story/issue did Superman first meet Adam Strange?

This is where I started to get sneaky.  I figured most would jump on “The Planet That Came to a Standstill”, from Mystery in Space # 75 (May, 1962).  This is the story in which Adam Strange first met the Justice League of America.  But Superman missed out on that adventure, appearing only in flashback.  So while Adam got to hobnob with the seven other JLA members, he missed out on getting the Man of Steel’s autograph.

The two didn’t meet until the sequel to MiS # 75---“Decoy Missions of the Justice League”, from JLA # 25 (Dec., 1963).  Before someone cries foul, yes, I know that Superman didn’t enter the story until the last few pages, and most of his interaction was with Adam Strange’s “aural image”.  But the last panel clearly shows the Man of Steel together with the actual Champion of Rann enjoying their defeat of Kanjar Ro.

Prince Hal nailed this one.

6.  What story/issue marked J’onn J’onzz’s last Silver-Age appearance with the Justice League of America?

Hal did what I figured most folks would do---go to the last issue of JLA produced by Gardner Fox and Mike Sekowsky and count back until hitting the last Fox/Sekowsky tale to include the Martian Manhunter.  That was, indeed, JLA # 61 (Mar., 1968).

But I couldn’t fool Luke.  He accurately recalled that there was one later appearance of J’onn J’onzz with the Justice League that took place in Action Comics # 366 (Aug., 1968).

The story “Substitute Superman” winds up a multi-issue arc in which the Man of Steel is believed to have died from the lethal “Virus X”.  As it turns out, on the rocket transporting his dying body to our sun, Superman gets better.  Upon returning to Earth, he discovers that the world already believes Superman to be cured and  “he” has been performing his usual super-feats all over the globe.

The mystery is cleared up when it’s revealed that the heroes of the Justice League have been posing as the Man of Steel, until a replacement Superman from the bottled city of Kandor could be chosen.

7.  Speaking of the JLA, per the by-laws of the Justice League, what was the schedule for its regular meetings?

This is the one that neither Luke nor Hal got right.  I’ll let Wonder Woman herself explain the by-law scheduling regular meetings of the Justice League . . . .

I cannot accept Luke’s answer of “monthly” because it is entirely possible that more than one month, perhaps several, go by before a regular JLA meeting convenes.  If an emergency meeting brings the members of the League together, then twenty-eight days later, there is another emergency meeting, and then yet another emergency meeting two weeks after that, obviously more than one month would go by without a regular meeting.

I am kind of curious as to where Hal got his “last Saturday of each month” notion.

8.  In what story/issue did Bizarro № 1 with his classic reversed “S-shield” insignia first appear?

This is where Luke showed his real Silver-Age expertise.  He not only sidestepped the pitfall but gave the correct information, citing the exact story.

Frankly, I was relying on one of the many continuity errors that cropped up in DC stories in the 1970’s to trip folks up.  You see, in every Bronze-Age retelling of Bizarro № 1’s origin, it is depicted like this, from  Superman # 306 (Dec., 1976) . . . .

You see how the scenes show Bizarro № 1’s “S-shield” emblem reversed at the moment of his creation?  That’s a significant error.  For, as Luke knew, when the first Superman Bizarro was created, in Action Comics # 254 (Jul., 1959), his chest insignia was exactly like the real Man of Steel’s.

(And before anyone asks, the first Bizarro---the one of Superboy, back in Superboy # 68 [Oct., 1958]---also wore the proper “S-shield” emblem.)

The “S” insignia of Bizarro № 1 and all the other Superman Bizarros did not become reversed until several Bizarro-related stories later, in Adventure Comics # 293 (Feb., 1962).  And it wasn’t because of a sudden inspiration by artist John Forte.

In “The Good Deeds of Bizarro-Luthor”, Bizarro № 1 and his family are exiled from Htrae by the rest of Bizarro society for the very fact that the S-insignia on their costumes is perfect.  And as we all know, “is big crime to make anything perfect on Bizarro World.”  The solution, which takes the Big Doofus № 1 twelve pages to figure out, is to outfit himself and all the other Superman Bizarros with new costumes bearing the backwards-S emblem.

As Luke also knew.

9.  Speaking of Bizarros, what did the Bizarro-Flash have as a chest insignia?

This was the only question Randomnole chimed in on, but he was the first to get it right.  The Bizarro-Flash’s chest insignia was the silhouette of a gavel inside a white circle.  Randomnole also did the rest of my job for me; he named the story source---specifically, Lois Lane # 74 (May, 1967)---and the reason.

Now, there’s something interesting to add.  On the previous question, I beat up the folks behind the Bronze-Age DC stories, as I so often do, for their sloppiness in making continuity mistakes.  But I have to point out a rare case when somebody actually did his homework.

The Bizarro-Flash did not appear again in a DC comics for another sixteen years.  Then he popped up for a bit part in Superman # 379 (Jan., 1983).  Incredibly, given the latter–age DC’s usual inattention to detail, the Bizarro-Flash was given the proper costume, down to the gavel insignia.

And they got it right again for Bizarro-Flash’s next and last appearance, in DC Presents # 71 (Jul., 1984).

Go figure.

10.  What was the last story/issue to show Hector Hammond as a normal man, before he enlarged his own brain?

This was probably the sneakiest question of the bunch, and it’s the only one that Luke fell for, I’m afraid.  But it didn’t give Prince Hal any problems.  He knew right off that it was JLA # 14 (Sep., 1962).

In his first appearance---“The Power Ring That Vanished”, from Green Lantern # 5 (Mar.-Apr., 1961)---Hector Hammond was a rather dashing, but completely normal-looking villain. 

Hammond showed up next in JLA # 14 as one of the five criminals enlisted by villain Mister Memory as part of his plot to destroy the Justice League. 

True, as Luke accurately noted, this was the issue in which Hammond used his evolution meteor on himself, to become a big-domed but immortal “man of the future”.  As Luke also pointed out, when Hammond appeared next, in Green Lantern # 22 (Jul., 1963), they took the change a step further by showing that a side-effect of turning himself immortal had eventually rendered Hammond immobile.

Unfortunately, Luke missed one earlier panel in JLA # 14.  The one depicting Mr. Memory briefing his five villainous cohorts on his dememorising scheme.  Here, we see a normal Hector Hammond for the last time.

In other words, Hammond did not turn himself into a future man between Green Lantern # 5 and JLA # 14.  He actually did it between the pages of JLA # 14 itself.  Just as Hal answered.

In the final tally, Luke got five out of ten correct, or 50%.  An excellent score, given the fact that he was the first to provide answers.

Prince Hal got seven of ten right, or 70%, also remarkable.

Randomnole only answered the one, but he was the first one to get it right and it was one of the toughies, so he deserves praise, as well.

I hope all of you found some of these answers enjoyable.  That’s the whole point.  Not to show how much you may not know about the Silver-Age adventures of our heroes, but to inspire that “Hey, wow!  I didn’t know that!” feeling when you see the answers posted here.

That’s the part that’s fun for me, when I put these quizzes together, and I hope they’re fun for you, when you read them.

Spider-Island has been a ton of fun.  It’s possibly my favorite story of the year.  I especially appreciate the story’s wit.  It’s even demonstrated in clever covers with J. Jonah Jameson and Mary Jane Watson displaying their newfound spider powers (Amazing Spider-Man 670 and 671). 

  Those images reminded me of some of my favorite covers from the past.  I also went ahead and looked up others.  So here, for your viewing pleasure, a dozen each of the best covers to feature Mary Jane Watson and J. Jonah Jameson:

J. Jonah Jameson:  Amazing Spider-Man 29, 52, 169 and 192 (1965, ’67, ’77 and ’79)

Mary Jane Watson: Amazing Spider-Man 59, Annual 19, Annual 21 and Web of Spider-Man 42 (1968, ’85, ’87 and ’88)

J. Jonah Jameson: Spectacular Spider-Man 57, 80, Amazing Spider-Man 246 and Spectacular Spider-Man 121 (1981, ’83, ’83 and ’86)

Mary Jane Watson: Amazing Spider-Man Vol. 2 51, 52, 500 and 515 (2003-05)

J. Jonah Jameson: Spectacular Spider-Man 152, Web of Spider-Man 52, Amazing Spider-Man 624 variant, Dark Reign: Sinister Spider-Man 2, Web of Spider-Man Vol. 2 #9 (1989, ’89, 2009, ’10)

Mary Jane Watson: Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man 4, Amazing Spider-Man 532, 537 and 639 variants (2006, ’06, ’07 and ’10)

And a couple of bonuses to end on from Web of Spider-Man 9 and Amazing Spider-Man 641 (both 2010).

As I’ve mentioned before, the Silver Age was not limited just to comic books.  Super-heroes made their way to television, as well.  And this time around, we’re going to look at one of the more popular examples, one that travelled over six thousand miles to reach the homes of American viewers.

In earlier entries, I’ve discussed the phenomenal popularity of the Batman television programme, which debuted in January of 1966.  Batmania was the mother lode of merchandising.  Anything connected with Batman, or super-heroes in general, was snapped up by a voracious public.  Comic-book publishers weren’t the only ones to capitalise on this fad.  Hoping to snag a healthy share of the Batman-inspired profits, television producers turned their efforts to cranking out their own caped-and-cowled do-gooders.

In the summer of 1966, the television division of United Artists found a relatively inexpensive way to jump on board the gravy train.  It purchased the international rights to a Japanese television show that had recently hit the air-waves---a series which was proving to be as big a hit in Japan as Batman was in America.

A show called Urutoraman, which, in English, translated to---Ultraman!

Ultraman was the brainchild of Eiji Tsuburaya, the head of the Visual Effects Department for Toho Tokyo Studios.  Toho had been responsible for bringing Godzilla (1954) to the screen, giving birth to the Japanese monster craze, called kaijū.

By 1966, Tsuburaya had formed his own production company, and had created a series titled Urutora Kyū; in English, Ultra Q.  It debuted on Japanese television in January, 1966.  In its original concept, Ultra Q was a prototype of The X-Files.  The main characters were a commercial pilot, his assistant, a news reporter, and a world-renowned scientist, who worked as an unofficial team investigating mysterious, supernatural phenomena.

Tsuburaya intended for the show to be moody and viscerally disturbing, in the style of The Twilight Zone.  But kaijū was still riding high in Japan, and the sponsoring network, the Toyko Broadcasting Company, pressured Tsuburaya into turning the show in that direction.  Thus, Ultra Q became a “giant-monster-of-the-week” series.

Tsuburaya’s initial instincts may have been right, for Ultra Q lasted only six months before being cancelled.   No matter.  He was ready to hit the decks running with his next series.

Technically, Ultraman was not a spin-off of Ultra Q; no characters or agencies carried over from the earlier show.  However, the two shows were related in spirit. 

Tsuburaya, aware that the axe was going to fall on Ultra Q, had started work on his next series early in the spring of ’66.  He started by taking some unproduced scripts and modifying them to fit his new concept.  Throughout development of the new series---which cycled through a number of the working titles:  WoO, then to Bemular, and then to Redman---Tsuburaya maintained the idea of a team of specialists who fought the kaijū that menaced Japan.  To this, he added the core concept of a giant alien who defended Earth from the frightful creatures.

The earliest versions of this alien ally were scrapped, for being too monstrous looking themselves.  Out of concern that the audience would have difficulty telling the hero apart from the evil beings he battled.

Art designer Toru Narita remodeled the character’s appearance; the result was a silver-and-red humanoid with a finned, ovoid head and oversized almond-shaped eyes, reflecting the “Roswell alien” stereotype.

The specialised-team aspect was slightly altered, as well.  Instead of a group of amateurs, it became a professional cadre attached to a governmental organisation.  With that, the format was established.

Ultraman is set in the then-future of the early 1990’s (one episode, “My Home is Earth”, would establish the specific year of 1993) and depicts the adventures of the Japanese division of an international organisation called the Science Patrol.  The Science Patrol is charged with the Earth’s defence against rampaging monsters, hostile aliens, and other bizarre threats to the safety of mankind.  To support its efforts, the Patrol is equipped with high-tech weapons and sophisticated vehicles, as well as extensive scientific and engineering facilities.  It is even capable of travelling into space, when necessary.

On one mission, Science Patrol member Hayata is sent to investigate reports of two U.F.O.’s that have entered Japanese air space.  Taking to the air, Hayata locates the mysterious intruders---two spheres of light streaking through the skies, one seeming to pursue the other.  Suddenly, the second of the two spheres collides with the Patrolman’s airship, causing it to plunge to the earth in a fiery crash.  Hayata is killed.

An unknown force levitates Hayata’s body to the alien craft which struck his ship.  Within stands a giant silver-skinned being---Ultraman.

Ultraman explains that he is a lawman from Nebula M78.  He had come to Earth to recapture the evil monster Bemular.  In his hot pursuit of Bemular’s ship---the other U.F.O.---he accidentally collided with Hayata’s jet.   To atone for killing the Science Patrolman, Ultraman will merge his lifeforce into Hayata’s body, resurrecting him.

There’s more.  Onto the unmoving form of Hayata, Ultraman drops a small, cylindrical device called a beta capsule.  The alien from Nebula M78 informs him that, once restored to life, he will remain as Hayata.  But, should the need arise, by pressing the button on the side of the beta capsule, Hayata will become Ultraman.

The revived Hayata resumes his place in the Science Patrol, which is fortunate because, soon after, Bemular begins to wreak havoc across the countryside.  When the Patrol finds itself stymied by the monster, Hayata uses the beta capsule and is transformed into Ultraman!  In a pitched battle, Ultraman establishes his credentials as a good guy by destroying Bemular.

Ultraman, standing over one-hundred-thirty-feet tall, possessed incredible strength and durability.  While he preferred to rely on his physical might and martial skills while combating his foes, he also had a wealth of powers at his command.  These included flight, levitation, teleportation, and the ability to cast beams with a vast array of effects.

Late in the stages, Tsuburaya realised that making his hero too powerful would dilute any sense of drama from the stories.  Something was needed to put the youngsters watching at home on the edge of their seats.  So Ultraman was given a weakess.

It was established that Earth’s atmosphere was harmful to Ultraman.  It depleted his energy at a much greater rate than normal.  In combat, the giant hero could operate at peak power for about three minutes before it started to drain.  As a cue to the viewing audience, Toru Narita added a “colour timer”---a small circular light---to Ultraman’s chest.  The timer glowed blue when the hero was at full strength.  When the timer turned red and began to blink audibly, he was in trouble.  If he did not change back to Hayata before time ran out, he would die.

Giving Ultraman such a severe limitation also fixed an inherent lack of logic in the show’s basic formula.  Virtually every episode followed the same outline:  (1) some sort of monster or bizarre being from outer space menaces Japan; (2) the Science Patrol spends most of the half-hour fighting it and, usually, not making very much progress; (3) Hayata becomes Ultraman and spends the last five minutes of the episode giving the beastie a good thrashing before blowing him into monster pieces-parts with his specium ray.

With the atmosphere of the Earth potentially lethal to Ultraman, Hayata would not switch to his gigantic alter ego until there were no other options.  It explained why he didn’t use the beta capsule the moment a monster first appeared.

There was a practical benefit, as well.  Restricting Ultraman’s presence to only a few minutes of screen time reduced the cost of special effects.  Particularly, in the expense of building and repairing scale miniature buildings and landscapes.

The man inside the Ultraman suit was stunt-performer Bin Furuya.  He was chosen for the part because he had the right proportions, but he had no experience at suit-acting.  Fortunately, Eiji Tsuburaya had hired Haruo Nakajima, the man who had portrayed Godzilla in the original film, to perform as most of the monsters appearing in Ultraman.  Nakajima taught Furuya the tricks of working inside a costume, a skill even more necessary due to the fact that Ultraman almost never spoke, except for shouting kiais in battle.

Furuya quickly became adept at using body language to convey what the silent Ultraman was thinking behind his immobile mask of a face.

For the all-important rôle of Hayata, Tsubaraja turned to actor Susumu Kurobe.  The twenty-six-year-old Kurobe was familiar with kaijū productions, having appeared in the film Ghidorha, the Three-Headed Monster and in an episode of Ultra Q. 

The part of Hayata was key.  While Ultraman was the titular hero of the series, the leading rôle belonged to Hayata, his human host, who would occupy most of the screen time.   Kurobe’s good looks and self-assured mien were perfect for the human side of Ultraman.  His Hayata was capable and decisive, just the sort of fellow you’d want around when trouble erupted.

Once the remaining cast regulars were chosen, Tsuburaya was ready to go.  In June of 1966, even as Ultra Q’s short run on the air was winding down, shooting began on the first episodes of Ultraman.

At seven p.m., 10 July 1966---the same weekday and time slot formerly occupied by Ultra Q---Ultraman was unveiled to the Japanese public, in a televised special preview performed live before a studio audience of delighted children and their somewhat more reserved parents.  In a skit, the actors playing the Science Patrol were introduced, and when Ultraman---without the benefit of camera tricks, a human-sized one---appeared, even the adults began to feel the excitement.

Exactly one week later, the first episode---“Urutora Sakusen Dai Ichigō” (“Ultra Operation Number One”)---aired.  There would be thirty-eight more.

I don’t know if Eiji Tsurburaya meant to take advantage of the Batman craze, which was in full swing at the time Urutoraman debuted, but he certainly profited from it.  Combining kaijū with the influence of Batmania proved to be a magic formula.  The series took off like wildfire in Japan.  Uruatoraman toys and merchandise flooded the shelves and were purchased just as quickly by parents dragged to the stores by their hero-struck children.  The theme song, “Urutoraman no Uta” (“The Song of Ultraman”), was recorded on vinyl and blared constantly from radio stations.

In Japan, the popularity of Urutoraman eclipsed even Batmania, and that was saying something.

Even as the sales of Ultraman dolls and games and wrist watches were making money for the merchandisers, Tsuburaya Productions was experiencing the opposite problem.  Eiji Tsuburaya was learning that a television budget could not accommodate the same level of special effects as a movie budget.  Even with the hero’s screen time limited to only a few minutes, there was still a gargantuan monster smashing his way through Japan for most of the half-hour.  The cost of constantly building scale miniature skyscrapers and warehouses and power-plants was staggering.  Sometimes entire city blocks had to be constructed, only to have Ultraman and his foe reduce most of them to rubble during their battle.

That’s not to mention the optical effects, required whenever Ultraman used his specium ray or some other force beam, which was virtually every episode.  Each one of those added another three-figure expense to the show’s growing tab.

Despite the show’s runaway success, Tsuburaya was losing money.  There was only one thing to do.

In a move that was unusual for the day, at least by Western television standards, the Urutoraman series came to a close by resolving the central premise.  On 09 April 1967, the Tokyo Broadcasting Station aired the final episode, titled “Saraba Urutoraman”---“Farewell, Ultraman”.

In this last outing, the Science Patrol is targeted by an invading force of hostile aliens intent on conquering Earth.  The Patrollers succeed in defeating the attacking spacecraft, but in retaliation, the invaders dispatch a giant creature called Z-Ton to destroy the Science Patrol headquarters.  Hayata changes to Ultraman, only to find himself in the fight of his dual lives, as Z-Ton has been specially prepared to defeat the gigantic hero.

After an intense struggle, the threat which has hung over Ultraman’s head during his time on Earth finally comes to pass.  His warning light extinguishes as the last of his energy expires.  His amber eyes dim and he topples over, stiff as a board.

Amazingly, considering its track record, the Science Patrol manages to destroy Z-Ton on its own.  At the same time, Ultraman’s superior from Nebula M78 arrives to retrieve the body of the fallen hero.  The commander instils Ultraman’s body with a force which revives the spark of life left in him.  Ultraman will be taken home, where he can fully recuperate.  However, so that Hayata does not suffer, the commander uses the same force to restore the Earthman’s life, separate from Ultraman.

Hayata returns to his fellow members of the Science Patrol, with no memory of anything that took place after his ship was destroyed back in the first episode.

Eiji Tsuburaya was about to get a last-minute save of his own.  The television division of the U.S. company United Artists was, like every other American TV producer, looking for a way to cash in on the Bat-craze.  U.A.’s film division had already experienced success in backing foreign projects, such as Harry Saltzman and Albert Broccoli’s James Bond series and Sergio Leone’s “spaghetti westerns”.  Taking a tip from that, United Artists-TV, instead of producing its own super-hero television series, opted to see what was available internationally.

After seeing the ratings for Urutoraman, it was a no-brainer.  U.A.-TV started negotiations with Tsuburaya Productions as early as the previous summer, but it took several months to work out the final terms and a few more months for the deal to go through.  Ultimately, it was a win-win for both parties:  the price U.A.-TV paid to purchase the American distribution rights to Urutoraman was cheaper than what it would have cost to produce its own series.  And Tsuburaya received enough money to get out of the red.

Of course, some things had to be done, in order to make the Japanese series accessible to American viewers.

The most obvious change was to Anglicise the name of the series, and its hero, to Ultraman.  The opening title sequence was preserved intact, except for the screen credits, which were presented in the standard Latin alphabet, instead of Japanese ideograms.

The brass-and-guitar theme composed by Kunio Miyauchi was given new English lyrics.  The original lyrics extolled the virtues of the hero through metaphor.   The English ones, true to conventional U.S. television wisdom, gave any first-time viewers a sixty-second explanation of who Ultraman was.

Last, but most crucial, was the dubbing.  It was more than just replacing the Japanese dialogue with English sentences.  One of the more cringeworthy aspects of the early Toho monster films, when dubbed for Western distribution, was the noticeable mismatching of the English words to the mouth-movements of the Japanese actors.  Too often, a line of dialogue that was six or seven words long in Japanese was changed to a terse “Right!” or “Let’s go!” in English, leaving the actor’s mouth moving in silence, as if he had something stuck to the roof of his mouth.

Another consideration was that the dubbed voices fit the personalities of the characters.

For that, U.A.-TV went to a man who was probably the most knowledgeable professional at dubbing Japanese television---Peter Fernandez.  At the time, Fernandez was already voice-acting on two other Japanese imports---Marine Boy and Speed Racer.  His experience went back a few years, when he wrote English dialogue for the Japanese cartoon Astro Boy, which had entered U.S. syndication in 1963.  He understood the need for synchronising the English words to the mouth-movements of the character on screen. 

He wrote the dubbed dialogue for Ultraman to conform to the lips of the actors on screen and was generally successful.  On occasion, though, plot requirements and the differences between the two languages forced a rapid delivery to squeeze it in, giving an unintended franticness to the actor’s words, like he was speaking while his pants were on fire.

As Ultraman’s dialogue director, Fernandez provided some of the voices himself, but for the lead, he assigned actor Earl Hammond.  Hammond’s firm baritone fit the competent, all-business Hayata to a T.

However, the voice that became the most memorable to American fans of Ultraman was that of Jack Curtis, who provided the narration.   With his deep, urgent delivery, some of Curtis’ lines became so imprinted in the minds of youthful viewers that they can quote them by heart to this day . . . .

“Using the beta capsule, Hayata becomes---Ultraman!”

“The tremendous energy Ultraman gets from the sun diminishes rapidly in Earth’s atmosphere.  The warning light begins to blink!  Should it stop completely, it will mean Ultraman will never rise again!”

By August of 1967, Ultraman was ready for American syndication.  Next time out, we’ll take a closer look at that version, the one that most of us who were around at the time remember.

Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

If you’re wondering who John Carter is, and why there’s a big, splashy movie about him premiering March 9, let me add two words that will make it all clear:

Of. Mars.

Does “John Carter of Mars” sound more familiar? It should, because he’s a character that’s been around for exactly a century. His first story began in 1912 in the pulp magazine The All-Story, and was called “Under the Moons of Mars.” It was re-titled A Princess of Mars when it was released as a novel in 1917, with 10 more novels following.

Still not ringing a bell? Then maybe the author’s name might help: Edgar Rice Burroughs. That’s right, the creator of Tarzan of the Apes.

Got it now? I’d hope so, because John Carter of Mars is relatively famous, which is why it’s a mystery why Disney decided to drop the “of Mars” for this film’s title, given that the ERB series is the great-grandfather of movies like Avatar and Star Wars. I can understand why Disney would avoid naming it “A Princess of Mars,” since a poorly received movie of similar name – one based verrrrry loosely on the ERB work – sank without a trace in 2009 (starring, believe it or not, Traci Lords).

But John Carter of Mars is a big fave in the sci-fi crowd, of which I am a happy member. The first book I ordered from the Science Fiction Book Club in 1968 was A Princess of Mars, and Dejah Thoris – the titular princess – aroused strange longings in my pre-adolescent self. I desperately wanted to be John Carter, a Civil War officer mysteriously transported to Barsoom – that’s what the natives call it – where he can hop around like a grasshopper and is much stronger than he should be, due to the lower gravity and thinner atmosphere. So even Superman owes a debt to John Carter, since his powers were the same in his 1938 debut, and his creators used the same explanation.

Speaking of Barsoom’s atmosphere, the first novel establishes that it’s slowly dissipating, suggesting that Carter might have moved through time as well as space – and that the planet is doomed to be as lifeless as it appeared to the scientists of the mid-1800s. But as a Confederate, John Carter is used to lost causes, and he won’t let that happen! Not with the gorgeous Dejah Thoris of the city-state Helium at his side! And his buddy Tars Tarkas, the mighty, green, four-armed Thark warlord! (Many creatures on Barsoom have extra limbs. The humans don’t have anything extra, except Dejah Thoris, who has an extra dose of va-va-voom.)

In addition to trailblazing the whole interplanetary warrior thing (say “thank you,” Flash Gordon and Luke Skywalker), the John Carter books also moved in more-or-less real time, and eventually the novels were about the children of Carter and Thoris. One was named Carthoris, anticipating the celebrity portmanteaus of today.

While not as successful as his “big brother” Tarzan, John Carter has had his share of media exposure. He appeared in Big Little Books in the 1930s and ‘40s, and in a syndicated comic strip that ran from 1941 to 1943. He appeared in three Dell comics in the 1950s, as a backup in DC’s ERB books in 1972-73 and a four-issue miniseries at Dark Horse in 1996. The most successful series so far is John Carter of Mars by Marvel Comics, which ran 28 issues and three annuals from 1977 to 1979, and enjoyed the efforts of top creators like Marv Wolfman, Gil Kane and Dave Cockrum.

Currently the John Carter concepts are appearing in a variety of titles by Dynamite Entertainment, which brings us to another reason why you may have heard of John Carter lately. The character is in the public domain, but the Burroughs family’s company, ERB Inc., is suing Dynamite anyway for trademark infringement and unfair competition.

As to the movie, it features faces familiar to fans of genre fiction, like Willem “Green Goblin” Dafoe, James “Solomon Kane” Purefoy, Mark Haden “Sandman” Church and Mark “Sinestro” Strong. And if the trailers to John Carter bring to mind Avatar or Star Wars, just remember that Edgar Rice Burroughs is a well from which both James Cameron and George Lucas have drunk deep.

As did my younger self, who to this day still dreams of red skies, green warriors and beautiful princesses.

Of. Mars.

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com.

Photos:

1. John Carter (TAYLOR KITSCH) By Frank Connor ©2011 Disney. JOHN CARTER™ ERB, Inc.

Every so often, in order to put the subject of one of my Deck Log entries into perspective, I have to go back to before the beginning of the Silver Age.  Since I’ll be talking about that “Ninth Wonder of the World”, Congorilla, this is one of those times.  So let’s ratchet the dial of the Wayback Machine much farther back than usual, back to the dawn of the Golden Age.

 To More Fun Comics # 56 (Jun., 1940), to be precise.

 Anyone in the comics industry at the time---from the publisher down to the kid who sharpened the pencils and emptied out the dustbins---understood what the popularity of Superman meant to comics.  When comic books, in the format we recognise to-day, were introduced in 1934, publishers cast about for the type of material that would be most popular.  Funny animals.  “Bigfoot” cartoons.  Westerns.  Mysteries.   Detective stories.  Sea tales. You name it.  It wasn’t until National Comics (DC) introduced Superman in 1938, to an overwhelming response, that comics publishers knew how to set their course.

Super-hero series took over the four-colour pages.  Still, even after a couple of years, National wasn’t sure that “mystery-men”, as they were called, would prove to be anything more than a fad which would shortly run its course.  With the luxury of hindsight, we know better, but National was hedging its bets.  Many of its smaller, supporting series featured heroes who didn’t wear tights and capes.  For these, it drew from types that showed popularity in other media, such as the pulps and newspaper comic strips.  So, sandwiched between the super-hero headliners were plenty of stories about detectives and magicians and explorers, any genre that might prove to be the next wave.

That brings us to More Fun Comics # 56, which saw the debut of Congo Bill--- renowned hunter, explorer, and baldfaced swipe of Alex Raymond’s successful “Jungle Jim”.  Bill was sprung full-blown on the readers, already established as an experienced, knowledgeable, and tough-as-nails soldier of fortune.  He was never given an origin and the only detail mentioned about his background was that he had been a pilot during the first World War.  We were never even told his last name; he was “Congo Bill” to everybody.

As befitting a “two-fisted globetrotter”, the most remote places of the world were Congo Bill’s sandbox.  The locales ranged from that first adventure in the African interior to the Himalayan mountains to the South American tropics.  Egypt, Mexico, the East Indies, the Caribbean, the Yukon---all these and more were backdrops for a Congo Bill adventure.

Like many back-up series, Bill didn’t enjoy much of a supporting cast.  For about a year and a half, “noted botanist and archæologist” Professor Joe Kent accompanied Bill, who served as his guide.  Sometime later, he picked up a kinda-sorta girlfriend, Shiela Hanlen.  By this time, the series had jumped ship to Action Comics.  Apparently a lifestyle of snakes, bugs, hostile natives, and dysentery didn’t appeal to Shiela.   She was gone after Action Comics # 44 (Jan., 1942) and so was Professor Kent.

It really didn’t matter; Congo Bill steamed right along, leaving other second-stringers such as Pep Morgan, the Black Pirate, and Clip Carson (another Jungle Jim clone) in his wake.  The strength of series was its verisimilitude.  The premise of an adventurer with no ties opened the door to virtually any kind of plot.  In any given issue, Congo Bill could discover a lost city in Africa, encounter dinosaurs in a hidden prehistoric valley, investigate a haunted castle in Syria, battle smugglers along the Ivory Coast, get captured by a secret cult in India, or infiltrate an underwater Nazi U-boat base.  Occasionally, there would even be a fish-out-of-water tale set in New York or some other big city, showing how Bill’s wilderness skills would come in handy in modern civilisation.  The series could be moulded like clay, to fit any theme editor Whitney Ellsworth thought would sell comics.

In 1948, Congo Bill hit one of the benchmarks of a successful character when Colombia released the fifteen-chapter movie serial, Congo Bill, starring Don McGuire as the “famed hunter and animal trainer.”  The plot involved an infant lost in the Africa, following a plane crash, who grows up to become a fabled “white goddess” of the jungle.  Bill is hired to find her by the executors of her father’s multi-million-dollar estate and out to stop him is the fellow in line to inherit that wealth if the girl isn’t found.

The moderate success of the serial propelled the comic-book series along for a few more years.  A couple of changes came along the way.  Bill was given an official reason for his varied adventures by making him a troubleshooter for the World-wide Insurance Company.  Then, in Action Comics # 191 (Apr., 1954), Bill picked up a sidekick---Janu, a young boy who been brought up in the jungle after his father had been killed by a tiger.  Janu’s style of speaking came from the Superbaby-Zook-Bizarro school of English, but at least he gave Bill someone to talk to and provide exposition.

The arrival of Janu, the Jungle Boy, came just in time for the next development of the series:  graduating to its own title.

By the early 1950’s, the Golden-Age glow of super-heroes had finally dimmed, and DC, like other comics publishers, was looking for the next Big Thing.  In a scattershot approach, it produced Western series, series about big-city newspapers, supernatural and science-fiction anthologies, titles based on pirates, mediæval knights, firemen, frogmen, and anything else it could think of.

Seeing as how Congo Bill had hung on gamely for well over a decade, it seemed like a natural.  So, in the summer of 1954, Congo Bill # 1 (Aug.-Sep., 1954) hit the stands.  Bill’s series in Action Comics continued to run concurrently with his own magazine.  It was a good thing, since Congo Bill didn’t have the success that DC had expected.  It ran for seven issues, ending a year after it started.

The cover of that first issue of Congo Bill featured a golden gorilla.   That would prove to be prescient.

Meanwhile, in Action Comics, Congo Bill and Janu rolled right along, rescuing lost safaris and nabbing ivory poachers.  But comics were about to experience another sea change, and this time, it would have an effect on the way Bill did business.

Showcase # 4 (Sep.-Oct., 1956) saw the return of an old DC super-hero---the Flash!  But this wasn’t your father’s Scarlet Speedster.  He had been revised as a new character, upgraded for the times, under the auspice of editor Julius Schwartz.  The sales of Showcase # 4 soared.  To make sure it wasn’t a fluke, the Flash appeared in three more issues of Showcase, and each time, the sale figures were impressive.  It was official:  super-heroes were back in vogue.

DC followed up with revised versions of other old super-heroes, such as the Green Lantern and the Atom.  And some existing, non-super-hero series were nudged in that direction.  Over at Detective Comics, the Manhunter from Mars series featured a Martian posing on Earth as a human police detective, secretly using his otherworldly abilities to solve crimes.  Now the emphasis shifted to the Manhunter performing super-feats in his natural alien form, and by 1959, he was operating openly as a super-hero.

Plain, old Congo Bill, in his old-style pith helmet, jodhpurs, and sidearm, just wouldn’t do, decided Action Comics editor Mort Weisinger.

In Action Comics # 224 (Jan., 1957), Congo Bill encountered a gorilla with a golden pelt and seeming to exhibit a higher intellect than usual for such an animal.  Bill spent the rest of the story saving it from some determined hunters looking to mount the ape’s golden head on a wall.

There’s no way to know for sure, but either Weisinger or writer Robert Burnstein probably remembered this story and used it as a springboard for “The Amazing Congorilla”, which appeared in Action Comics # 248 (Jan., 1959).

This landmark tale begins with Congo Bill rescuing an old friend, Chief Kawolo.  The tribal witch doctor had accidentally fallen into a steep ravine, and though Bill is able to pull him to safety, Kawolo is mortally wounded.  That night, while he lays dying, Kawolo gives Bill a ring bearing the carved image of a gorilla.  It is a magic talisman, the witch doctor explains, that will allow Congo Bill to exchange identities with the legendary golden gorilla, sacred to his tribe.

Should Bill need the strength of the golden gorilla, says Kawolo, he has only to rub the ring.  Then, his mind and that of the great ape will exchange bodies, for a period of one hour.   Congo Bill dismisses this as superstition, but dons the ring, humouring his old friend in his final moments.

Weeks pass (in which, remarkably, Bill apparently resists the impulse to test the ring just to see what happens), then one day, while the famed jungle adventurer is exploring a deep cave, an earthquake causes a cave-in, sealing the entrance.  Trapped, Congo Bill remembers the ring and Kawolo’s words.  Not really expecting it to work, but with nothing to lose, Bill rubs the ring.  Instantly, his head begins to spin . . . .

Some distance away from the cave, the sacred golden gorilla is lumbering through the tall grass when his eyes suddenly flash with intellect.  To Congo Bill’s amazement, the magic ring has worked!  His mind now occupies the body of the golden ape.   He rushes back to the site of the cave-in and with the mighty strength of the gorilla, he clears the entrance.  Inside, he discovers his human body gibbering incoherently and beating his chest.

Bill realises that the gorilla wears a duplicate of the magic ring on one of its fingers, and when the hour elapses, he rubs it---and finds his mind back in his own body.

Following super-hero tradition, Congo Bill determines to use his newfound power to battle poachers, smugglers, and other jungle evil.   It doesn’t take long for stories of a golden gorilla with a man’s intelligence to spread through the continent, and the man-ape was given the name Congorilla.

Once the new format was established, there seemed to be a great deal of need for a gorilla with a man’s intelligence.  Congo Bill, as himself, was pushed more and more into the background.  Lost was the idea that the rugged adventurer had been quite capable of handling jungle crimes with only his tracking skills, his revolver, and a good right cross.  The scripts would tell us what a “famed hunter and explorer” he was, but we saw little evidence of it.

On the other hand, Congorilla made quite a name for himself.  Whenever Bill’s mind took over the golden ape’s body, he didn’t take too many pains to hide the fact.  Friends and foes alike were constantly amazed at the gorilla’s human feats---driving a jeep, piloting an aeroplane, administering medicines, communicating by morse code, and the like.  That seemed to be the hook.  Most stories contrived to put Congorilla in a situation of ape “imitating” man.

Only Janu was privy to the secret of Congo Bill’s magic ring.  Good thing, too, because the biggest drawback to the mind-switching routine was the fact that, when Bill’s mind inhabited Congorilla, the ape’s mind occupied his human body.  In order to keep his body from being imperiled whenever he made the switch, Bill would resort to protective measures, such as lashing himself to a tree, or taking sleeping pills to knock himself out, whenever the gorilla’s mind entered it.  Janu’s job was to stand guard over Bill’s body while Congorilla was in action.

Usually it was an easy enough assignment, but every once in a while, the gorilla-brained Bill would get loose.  Then Janu faced the knotty task of controlling the antics of a gorilla-in-a-man’s-body, as well as trying to cover up for Congo Bill’s apparently bizarre behaviour.  Generally, the jungle boy wasn’t too good at either.

And then there a few occasions when ring on the golden gorilla’s finger would become lost, meaning Bill could not transfer his mind back to his own body after the hour had elapsed.  It was fun having a gorilla’s body every once in a while, but the prospect of spending the rest of his life in it always spooked the bejesus out of him.

Another problem was the existence of the golden gorilla when he was just being a gorilla.  He may have been sacred to Chief Kawolo’s tribe, but to others, he was an inviting target.  Hunters wanted to bag him for a trophy; circus owners wanted to capture him for display as a unique attraction.  Bill spent quite a few stories babysitting the big gold simian.

The Congorilla series finally lost its long-time home in Action Comics early in 1960, when Mort Weisinger decided to devote more pages to the Supergirl back-up.  But Congo Bill, Janu, and the golden ape were still popular enough that it was moved over to Adventure Comics, beginning with issue # 270 (Mar., 1960).

Another indication that Weisinger intended to keep the concept alive was when, after twenty years, Congo Bill made his first appearance in another character’s series.  In “Jimmy’s Gorilla Identity”, from Jimmy Olsen # 49 (Dec., 1960), Bill approaches Jimmy because of the cub reporter’s friendship with Superman.

Bill needs the Man of Steel’s help.  As the hunter explains to Jimmy, the golden gorilla had been captured in Africa and shipped to some place in the vicinity of Metropolis.  Bill has checked all the local zoos and circuses, to no avail.  He’s hoping that Superman, with his telescopic vision, can locate the golden-pelted ape.  To impress upon Jimmy the urgency of the matter, Bill reveals the secret of his magic ring and how it enables him to become Congorilla.

Unfortunately, Superman is unavailable.  He’s undertaking a crucial mission at the Earth’s core.  Even Jimmy’s signal watch is of no help; heavy deposits of lead ore block the super-sonic signal from reaching the Man of Steel’s super-hearing.  Congo Bill opts to continue his search on his own, leaving his magic ring with Jimmy, to show Superman later.  Of course, Bill has no idea of what a bucket of worms he has just opened.

Because it's only an eleven-page story, it takes the Jimster less than a day to succeed where Bill failed.  The cub reporter finds the golden gorilla in the possession of the owner of a wild-animal farm.  Almost immediately, though, an emergency arises, and naturally, the impetuous Jimmy sees this as a job for Congorilla.  He rubs the magic ring and finds himself in control of the gorilla’s body.  Unfortunately, he does a piss-poor job of making sure his human body is safe while the ape’s mind occupies it.  Hijinx ensue.

It was a valiant effort, but over in Adventure Comics, Congo Bill’s series was finally running out of steam.  The last Congorilla tale appeared in issue # 283 (Apr., 1961), after which it was cancelled to make room for, of all things, “Tales of the Bizarro World”.

Whatever Congo Bill and Congorilla fans there were left hadn’t quite seen the last of them, yet.  Bill returned to his old Action Comics stomping grounds when Superman, Perry White, Lois Lane, and Jimmy Olsen visited Africa in “Brainiac’s Super-Revenge”, from Action Comics # 280 (Sep., 1961).  The story begins when Brainiac is accidently freed from the ice-age prison where Superman had left him five issues previous.  Intent on revenge, the computer villain returns to the modern era and tracks down the Man of Steel and his friends while they are exploring the Congo.

After using a kryptonite bomb to neutralise Superman’s powers, Brainiac shrinks the lot of them down to doll size and imprisons them in a bottle.  Unfortunately for his revenge plot, a familiar golden gorilla is also shrunken with them.  When the simian begins to act intelligently, Superman and Jimmy catch on.  Still possessing his gorilla strength, Congorilla enables them to escape the bottle.  And when Brainiac is distracted by Congo Bill, growling and beating his chest like an ape, the Man of Steel is able to restore himself, his friends, and Congorilla to their normal sizes.  One tap of his super-strong hand later and Brainiac is under wraps.

That was it for Bill and the golden ape, until 1965, when four issues of World’s Finest Comics carried reprints of old Congorilla stories in the title’s “Surprise Feature” back-up slot.  These got enough positive reception for Mort Weisinger to test the waters for the character’s revival.   That came in “Jimmy Olsen, Ape Man”, from issue # 86 (Jul., 1965) of the cub reporter’s title.

Here, Jimmy receives a report from the African branch of his fan club; two strangers bound for the Kilimanjo mountains were overheard discussing something called “Project Kryptonite”.  With Superman away on one of those space missions he goes on whenever the plot needs him out of the way, Jimmy decides to check it out himself.  He heads for the Kilimanjo mountain country in Africa and seeks out Congo Bill’s help.  The famous jungle expert is laid up with a broken arm, however, so he loans Jimmy his magic ring. 

As it turns out, the golden gorilla is foraging in the same region, so the Jimster pulls the mind-switch.  In the body of Congorilla, it’s a snap for the cub reporter to ascend Kilimanjo.  At its snowy peak, he discovers the two men.  They’re renegade scientists who have constructed a “hyper-magnetron”, designed to draw kryptonite meteors from space, to use against Superman.  Jimmy has other ideas about that.

Actually, as Jimmy Olsen stories go, this one isn’t shameful at all, with little of the ludicrousness that usually makes Silver-Age fans squirm whenever the phrase “Jimmy Olsen story” is mentioned.  It’s a decent showing for Congorilla, even with Jimmy’s mind instead of Congo Bill’s.  With a little tinkering, it wouldn’t have been out of place in the original series.

Nevertheless, it was the last Silver-Age hurrah for Congo Bill and the great golden ape.  It would be another dozen years before fans became nostalgic enough for Congorilla to see him, again.

Central to the origin of the Legion of Super-Heroes was the premise that the inspiration for the thirtieth-century teen-age super-hero club came from the twentieth-century exploits of Superboy.  Regarded as “the greatest super-hero of all”, the Boy of Steel was inducted into the Legion in Adventure Comics # 247 (Apr., 1958).  Four years later, the Legion graduated to a regular feature in Adventure, eventually taking over the lead and then the entire magazine.  Adventure Comics would be the Legion’s home through the end of the Silver Age, and Superboy stayed for the whole ride, participating in nearly all of those adventures in the far-flung future.

The presence of the Boy of Steel, though, was a subtle reminder of a question never addressed or even mentioned throughout the series:  what did fate hold for his adult self, beyond the present-day adventures we read about in Superman and Action Comics?  Implicit in the thirtieth-century setting of the Legion was the fact that the full events of Superman’s life had already been recorded.  From the Legion’s standpoint, it was ancient history. 

Rare and tantalising hints were dropped from time to time.  For example, we knew, thanks to Adventure Comics # 369 (Jun., 1968), that Superman would eventually marry.  But to whom, Legion fans were never told, nor if his marriage would produce children.

Furthermore, the Legion tales curiously ignored the big question---why was there no Superman operating in the thirtieth century? The original Man of Steel may not have survived for a millennium, but he would have had descendants, wouldn’t he?  What happened to them?  Why was there no Caped Kryptonian protecting the Earth of the future? 

Superman editor Mort Weisinger probably got a lot of letters asking these questions.  Followers of the Legion in Adventure Comics tended to be quite vocal.  And Weisinger was responsive to this.  The Legion of Super-Heroes was more fan-interactive, perhaps, than any other series produced by DC.

So, if the readers wanted to know about a Superman in the thirtieth century, then, by gum, Mort was going to tell them.

To make sure they didn’t miss it, Weisinger made it the cover feature of Superman # 181 (Nov., 1965), introducing the Superman of 2965. This version was so different from the original man from Krypton, assured the cover blurb, that we “wouldn’t believe our eyes!”

As far as what had happened between the time of our Superman and that of his distant descendant, writer Edmond Hamilton zipped through all of that on the splash page:

Though Superman is the mightiest man on Earth, even he cannot live forever!  Someday he will marry and have a son, Superman II, who will replace him and carry on as mankind’s foremost crusader for good.  And so the torch of justice will be passed on through the ages, from father to son!  But how will the Superman of 1,000 years from now differ from his great ancestor?

The Superman of 2965 is the twentieth in the Superman line, each of his nineteen predecessors having served his turn as the Man of Steel (much in the same way that Lee Falk's the Phantom was a hereditary calling). Physically, he resembles the original, but, as drawn by Swan and Klein, is not an exact double for the 1965 Superman. Actually, he looks more like the adult Mon-El we will see in Adventure Comics # 354 (Mar., 1967).

Superman XX possesses all of the original's powers, undiminished over the centuries. The difference is in his weakness. This Superman is immune to all forms of kryptonite; however, a chemical fall-out from an inter-galactic war a century earlier had settled in the seas of all of the planets. The now-tainted sea water is deadly to him. Even a simple splashing of sea water makes him stagger. A complete immersion immediately paralyses him and will kill him within minutes.

His secret identity is Klar Ken T5477, a reporter for the Daily Interplanetary News.  By the time of the thirtieth century, printed news is obsolete.  To keep up on current events, folks watch the ultra-news, beamed into their homes via holograph.  As part of his disguise, Klar wears “telescopic spectacles”, routinely used by reporters of the day to aid in locating news.

His circle of friends includes colleague Lyra 3916.  Lyra, a pretty brunette, is the Future Superman’s “Lois Lane”.  However---in one of those “dramatic differences” from the 20^th-century format---she despises Superman as a conceited oaf but carries a torch for Klar. A not-so-dramatic difference is Jay L3388, an eager cub reporter for the ultra-news service and Jimmy Olsen-analogue.

The reporters take their assignments from a computer editor called PW-5598. This computer was designed by Per Wye T7357, a descendant of Perry White.

This first story opens with the Superman XX being deputised by the Federation of Planets to act as a lawman with unlimited powers on all member worlds.  This ceremony is a traditional one for each Superman in succession, no doubt extending from the similar twentieth-century event when the original Superman was made an honorary citizen of all member countries by the United Nations.

Though clearly, from other elements already in place, the twentieth Man of Steel has been operating as a super-hero for some time before this, the deputising ceremony marks the official start of his career.  It symbolises the moment when he officially assumes the mantle of “Superman, champion of the universe”.

(For the record, his first mission as the Universe’s Hero is to stop a rogue planet from colliding with Earth and Mars.  It takes him all of two panels.)

Shortly thereafter, we learn that the 30th-century Superman's Fortress of Solitude is a satellite in orbit around the Earth, shielded from prying eyes by a cloak of invisibility. However, a page or two later, two criminals find a way to penetrate that shield and evade most of the snares set for intruders, before being nabbed by the Man of Steel. After that, Superman XX moves his citadel into the centre of Earth's sun.

This eight-page tale simply sets the stage, and no doubt, Mort was hoping it would whet the readers’ appetites.  Apparently it did, since the Future Superman’s first real adventure appeared the following year, in Action Comics # 338 (Jun., 1966).  For those who came in late, the Superman of 2966 (moved up a year to maintain the thousand-year separation) was introduced thusly:

Hopping heroes!  What kind of Superman story is this?  Can this future-age city be Metropolis?  And that flying guy doesn’t look like our Man of Steel!  Well, no wonder!  He’s the Superman of 2966---a direct descendant of the Caped Kryptonian!  And the villain?  Just turn the page and meet . . . “Muto---Monarch of Menace!”

The original Man of Steel fought Lex Luthor.  Superman V’s greatest foe was Vyldan.  The Superman of 2966 had for his arch-enemy---Muto, a dwarfish, yellow-skinned mutant.  Muto possessed an oversized cranium which held an enlarged brain, capable of various mental powers.

Despite his freakish appearance, Muto was an Earthman. Two decades earlier, the current Man of Tomorrow’s father, Superman XIX, intercepted a comet with a small, solid nucleus.  The comet was on a collision course with an inhabited world, and in order to save those lives, the nineteenth Action Ace smashed the nucleus to atoms.  However, the tremendous energy released opened a space-warp to another dimension, a warp which sucked a space-cruiser into it.  On board the trapped ship was a pregnant Earth woman who gave birth while in that alien dimension.  As a result, the baby was born with an inhuman appearance and incredible mental abilities.

The infant, now grown into the adult Muto, blames his hideous mutation on the earlier Man of Steel.  But he’ll settle for killing the son.

Surrounding himself with a band of alien lieutenants, Muto lands on the Weapons World, where the Federation of Planets confines devices too dangerous for the universe’s safety.  Superman XX tracks Muto to the Weapons World, but the villain’s mental powers, combined with his access to the deadly weaponry, results in a pitched battle.  As the combat sways back and forth, it becomes clear that Muto is a much more formidable foe for the 30^th-century Superman than Luthor or Brainiac ever was for his ancestor.

It also quickly becomes obvious that sea water is a much more constraining weakness than kryptonite ever was.  Unlike kryptonite, sea water exists in some form almost everywhere, and with his mental powers, Muto has little trouble finding some to use against Superman.  He can even condense the moisture in clouds into a paralysing sea spray.

Their battle rages on, jumping from planet to planet, until finally, on a civilised world, Muto uses his mind-over-matter power to create a tidal wave of sea water.  While trying to save lives, Superman is engulfed by the wave and submerged, immobile and dying.

Fans were left biting their nails, since the story ended here, to pick up the next month, in “Muto Versus the Man of Tomorrow”, in Action Comics # 339 (Jul., 1966).

In a clever trick of turning Muto’s own trap to his own benefit, the Superman of 2966 frees himself from his watery would-be grave and takes off after his foe.  Muto has used the respite to return to Earth where he savages the populace with the devices he stole from the Weapons World.

Once again, the battle is joined, but, this time, the various sea-water traps prepared by Muto are less effective.  Superman has taken the precaution of outfitting his belt with flying jets that trigger automatically whenever they are dampened by water.  The jets fly the Man of Tomorrow clear of Muto’s water tricks. 

After fighting across the breadth of the Earth, Superman XX and Muto come to a showdown on a polar ice cap.  Before Muto’s mental powers can melt the entire cap, deluging the Man of Steel in so much sea water even his jets could not save him, the hero springs a trap of his own.  With his super-powers, he recreates the circumstances that opened the original space-warp to the dimension in which Muto was born.  A new warp opens, and the villain is irresistibly drawn back into the alien dimension.

Over the course of the series, the readership was given fascinating glimpses into the history of Superman. On the splash page of the first story from Superman # 181, is displayed a pavilion of statuary honouring the Supermen of past generations. Interestingly, the statue commemorating the original Man of Steel lists the years of his birth and death as "1920-197_", with the last digit of the year of death obscured. That means that the original Superman was, at most, a mere fifty-nine years of age when he died.

Other aspects of the Superman dynasty were revealed:

• Dave Kent was exposed as Superman IV when he had to go into action in his civilian identity to save a jet-train from crashing, an incident he could have avoided had he noticed the weak point in the railing. 

• Superman VII had his identity as Kanton K-73 revealed by his own son, when the toddler tore open his father's shirt with his own super-strength, revealing the super-suit underneath to house guests.

• The costume worn by Superman XX is the original one woven by Ma Kent out of Kal-El’s baby blankets.  Indestructible and immune to wear, it has been passed down from generation to generation.

The Superman of Tomorrow made one final appearance, in “The Danger of the Deadly Duo”, from World’s Finest Comics # 166 (May, 1967).

This story revealed that another of the Future Superman's foes was that era's Joker, who, like many in the series, was descended from the original, twentieth-century version.

Readers found out that there had been a dynasty of Batmen too, and for centuries---at least through the fifteenth generation---a Superman-Batman team had fought evil throughout the galaxy. But Superman XX has no Caped Crusader for a partner. The father of the current Joker had killed the nineteenth Batman at a public ceremony by gimmicking the dais to explode.

The blast had also killed several spectators, including Batman XIX's wife and the rest of his family.

A few pages later, we learn that the slain Masked Manhunter had a son.  An infant at the time, he had been too young to attend the ceremony.  And with his parents dead, there was no-one to tell him of his crime-fighting heritage.

After the boy---Bron Wayn E7705---grows into a man, he makes a pilgrimage to Wayn Manor, situated on his family’s private asteroid.  There, he accidentally discovers the entrance to the Batcave and learns of his lineage. Swearing vengeance on the nineteenth Joker, Wayn E7705 undertakes a period of intense training to become the next Batman.

In addition to his physical and mental development, the new Batman has a utility belt crammed full of futuristic devices to help him in his vendetta. The belt is outfitted with powerful mini-jets which enable him to fly; a molecular diffuser which allows him to pass through solid objects; an invisibility beam; a brain-wave tracer; a feature-adjustor capable of altering his appearance; and "all sorts of scientific detective equipment".

Instead of a Batmobile, Batman XX travels in "the Batship", a sleek, swift spacecraft adorned with a sweeping bat-silhouette on the nose.

Realising that the route to finding the killer of his parents is through his son, the current Joker, the Batman of 2967 seeks out and teams up with the Superman of 2967.  Complicating matters is the fact that Superman XX’s arch-foe, Muto, has escaped from the other dimension and has partnered with the Murderous Mountebank.

“The Danger of the Deadly Duo” is primarily a 30^th-century Batman showcase.  The Caped Crusader easily deduces where the Muto-Joker team will strike next, and the new World’s Finest Team has them on the run from the get-go, primarily due to the presence of Batman and the gimmicks in his futuristic utility belt.  After forcing the fleeing crooks down on a planetoid bombarded by constant electrical storms, Superman XX makes quick work of Muto, even though the big-brained villain flees into a cavern dripping with sea water.  The Man of Tomorrow simply slams repeatedly into the rocky ground overhead, forcing Muto to escape the cave before it collapses and crushes him.  As Muto emerges, Superman places an encephalo-helmet on his noggin, deadening the mutant’s super-powerful brain waves.

Meanwhile, Batman XX has it out with the son of his parents’ killer.  An awesome figure of vengeance, the Future Masked Manhunter determinedly shrugs off every weapon the Joker brings to bear.  Once he gets his hands on his prey, the Batman of 2967 beats him savagely, demanding to know where the Joker’s father is.  With one last trick, the Joker stuns the Batman and makes a desperate attempt to kill him.

It backfires.  Perhaps the father has escaped the Batman’s justice, but not the son.

In creating a thirtieth-century Superman, Mort Weisinger raised as many questions as he answered.  It is difficult to reconcile the existence of a Man of Steel in the same era, down to the year, as the Legion.  There are the minor discrepancies between the two series, such as the 30^th-century Superman’s “Federation of Planets”, as opposed to the Legion’s “United Planets”.  But the biggest problem is the inability to account for the presence of the other during times of crisis.

Especially in the Legion series over in Adventure, where there were plenty of occasions when Metropolis or the entire Earth faced overwhelmingly dire threats---the approach of the Sun-Eater, the onslaughts of Mordru and of Computo the Conqueror, the invasions of the Khunds and of the Dark Circle.  It stretches credibility to explain the 30^th-century Superman’s failure to show up in each case by saying he was away on a space mission each time.

Curiously, after examining the fans’ comments on the Future Superman stories,  I found no-one addressed this or asked other obvious questions---where was the Legion when Muto was wreaking havoc on the Earth?  Or, why didn’t Superman XX help out the Legion on such-and-such a case?   At least, not in the letters that Mort allowed to see print.

The failure to tie the 30^th-century Superman with the 30^th-century Legion was a remarkable lack of attention to continuity for Weisinger, especially this far along in his reign as editor of the Superman mythos. 

For several months in 1971-2, DC expanded its comics to forty-eight pages and filled out the extra pages with reprints.  During this time, the first three Future Superman stories were reprinted, but not before Weisinger’s relief, Julius Schwartz, inserted a convenient change.  He backed up all future time references by five hundred years.  Thus, the Superman of 2965 became the Superman of 2465, a good five centuries before the birth of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

It wasn’t a perfect solution, but it provided Julie with some wiggle room, in case somebody asked. 

As far as I could find, nobody ever did.

Welcome to the latest in a series of blog posts looking at DC One Million, Grant Morrison's epic 1998 JLA crossover. This installment is organised around week 3 of of the 5-week saga, as we follow one of the two main strands of this sprawling eons-spanning story to its climax. There are some SPOILERS ahead...

(You might like to catch up with Week 1 and Week 2 before reading on...)

Starman #1,000,000 James Robinson and Peter Snejbjerg. (Week 2)

This is a simply wonderful comic! It’s essentially just a long conversation between Ted Knight and his great- great- great- great - ad nauseam grandson, Farris Knight, spiced up with some superheroic scenes. It works however, because Snejbjerg’s art is delicious, and Robinson does a fine job of melding the themes and plot elements of Morrison’s grand epic with his own family-based superhero drama, his celebrated Starman run. We get further information on Starman 1m. He is an important actor in the crossover, and an issue like this shows one of the strengths of these collaborative multi-creator crossovers.  Whereas Morrison pulls the reader forward through a series of short snappy scenes stuffed with information, Robinson is able to apply the brakes for a bit here and let us spend some leisurely time getting to knowone of the main actors in teh drama.  Thus his choices and sacrifices later in the crossover have a little more impact.

As Farris talks to Ted, we begin to understand that he has turned traitor and is working with the evil Solaris, but Robinson slips in a further complication. The story opens with Starman’s base near Jupiter pining for its Starman, lost far back in time, and also the space-base seems to have an intense relationship with the Supercomputer Solaris. So we really have a strange three-way relationship between a man, a space-base and a solar supercomputer!

One of the subtle sub-themes of DC 1m is that people and machines are drawing closer together, especially now that everyone is tuned into the Headnet computer network. Through Headnet, too, machines like Robin the Toy Wonder are tuned into humanity and seem to believe that the headnet system grants them a soul and an afterlife of some sort.

In many ways, DC One Million plays with ideas popular amongst certain computer geeks of the 90s that the steady improvement of computers would somehow lead men towards immortality and some kind of rapture-like union between man and machines that would give us infinite knowledge and power. This moment is sometimes called the Singularity. These ideas have informed much of Morrison’s 90s work. Remember both the Key and the Master of Time in JLA growing in knowledge and information to encompass the universe? We see elements of it here in DC One Million as regards information being the most precious commodity, which practically ‘makes the galaxy go round’.

It was a fun set of ideas in the 90s and perhaps opened up new avenues of thought, and a certain wonder regarding what the future might bring. The best debunking of the pseudo-religion of the Singularity I have read is Jarod Lanier’s book “You are not a Gadget”, in which he attacks various assumptions about how computers are supposedly making our lives better and adding to our experience of the world. It’s a profound book regarding our present stage of computer –influenced social and cultural development and it is well worth reading, but I don’t have much space to go into his arguments here.

I did think it was fascinating to see that ideas that were extremely fringe and novel in Morrison’s 90s work have now become so central and ‘taken for granted’ in 21^st Century society that someone has written a book attacking them and decrying how deeply they’ve entered our mass-culture. Morrison was a kind of futurist in the 90s.  Staying with DC One Million, however, D. Curtis Johnson’s script for Chase 1,000,000, (which I'll look at in the next post) does anticipate some of Lanier’s objections, depicting some of the dehumanising downside of the integration of human minds with computers.

Regarding Starman #1,000,000’s place in the longform epic, Farris Knight takes the ‘Knight fragment’ which Ted discovered many years previously and kept in a lead box because it glowed green and gave off dangerous levels of radiation. Farris says he’s going to take it and bury it on Mars where it’ll be needed in the far future. (I wonder what it could be?)

There are really two main story strands in DC One Million. One of them concerns the events in 1998, where the JLA ‘left behind’ must team up with Justice Legion Alpha to combat the simultaneous threats of the Hourman Virus and Vandal Savage’s coincidental attack. I have organised this Week 3 blog post around that strand. It’s appropriate that I start with Starman, because the climax of this strand in Morrison's DC One Million #3 revolves around the choices Farris makes. This strand is really his story!

Detective Comics #1,000,000 - Chuck Dixon and Greg Land ... yes, that Greg Land (Week 3)

Another good Bat-instalment from Dixon, this time set in the present with fine artwork from Land and his collaborators. Land’s work looks like that of someone who is on his way to becoming a notable artist, rather than that of someone who is about to start making a career of swiping from porno mags. It probably helps that there are no women at all in this story. It makes sense that someone with a name like Chuck would be most at home writing manly stories starring manly men! Nightwing and Alfred work with Batman 1m (whose real name we never find out, it seems) to stop the virus.

There is a bit of business where Chuck’s manly men somehow deal with a global outbreak of the Hourman Virus by stopping the Firebug from leading a riot in the downtown area. This doesn’t make any sense in regards to any virus – technological or biological – that I’ve ever heard of, but the men get to act manly in any case.

Finally they stop messing about and get back to the cave where it is clear that the real solution to the virus will involve drastic action!

Man of Steel 1,000,000– Jerry Ordway (dialogue) Karl Kesel (plot) and Anthony Williams (pencils). (Week 2)

The team of Louise Simonson & Dan Bogdanove ended a long partnership on Man of Steel just prior to this issue. In the back issues I’ve read, I’ve found the soap opera elements of Simonson’s scripts to be quite strong, particular some of the scenes between Lois and Clark around the time of their marriage. So I’m a little sad to see that this longstanding creative team isn’t represented in my readthrough. I’d also like to have seen more ongoing writers dealing with Morrison’s great one-month shake-up of their titles. Perhaps it would only be industry gossip, but it’d be very interesting to follow up on how the regular writers of this time each reacted to the challenge of working to Morrison’s template. Some of the writers who took part really rose to the challenge, and some of them produced work which was a notch above what they were doing month in and month out on their own titles.

Back to the plot. Kal Kent, our Superman 1m, must defeat the Metal Men, who have been compromised by the Hourman virus and re-programmed to make the population suspicious of Justice Legion A and Superman 1m in particular. Given the strong role Platinum plays in the future strand of the story, it would seem that Morrison has some affection for her, or perhaps, as a pure, precious metal she has some role to play in the ‘alchemical’ meaning of his great epic.

The Metal Men almost turn the population of Metropolis against Superman 1m, but he eventually defeats them. Doc Magnus, now the 6^th Metal Man Viridium, arrives to explain that they’d been compromised. There are some deviations from what I know of Metal Men history here. The 5 original Metal Men combine into the formidable group-being called Alloy at one point. Then there is the strange revelation that Doc Magnus is no longer human himself, but a Metal Man made of a strange alien metal. It’s hard to tell if the writers are just running with recent developments in Metal Men continuity, or if Morrison has contributed new ideas. The additions to the core mythology do have a sense of evolution about them, but I think that Morrison prefers characters like the Metal Men to be handled in their original forms if possible.

The strange quirky Metal Men would seem to be very marginal to the DCU at this time, so it’s notable that Morrison gives them quite a central role here, if this is following one of his plots. Of course, Morrison was the main writer of the 'Mad Scientist' strand of 52 as well, which featured Doc Magnus and some of the metal men rather heavily too, so he must have some fondness for them.

Superman 1m’s adventures in the 20^th Century are given an urgency and desperation because his time away from the Supercomputer-Sun of the 853^rdCentury makes him grow weaker as the hours pass.

In his own time, he is “faster than a speeding tachyon, more powerful than the gravitational pull of a collapsing star -- able to leap from world to world, in a single bound.”  It seems obvious that the adventures of this character in his own time would be very hard to write.

I could have had separate thread sections on the adventures of both Superman 1m and Batman 1m in the 20^th Century. In both we get to see how the supporting casts of each react to having to deal with the future counterparts of the hero they are used to, and in doing so we do get an insight into those supporting casts. However, I thought 21^stcentury readers might be more interested in how their regular heroes got on in their weird future worlds.

Man of Steel #1,000,000 falls exactly between DC One Million #2, where the Rocket Red suit containing Arsenal was launched against Metropolis, and Superman #1,000,000 where Superman manages to stop it exploding.

Here’s the frame that links this comic to both of those. There just aren’t enough tributes to the great Slim Pickens in DC comics!

Superman #1,000,000 Abnett & Lanning (script) Norm Breyfogle (art) (Week 3)

It’s great to see Breyfogle here as artist. There may be evidence of haste in how some of these issues were pencilled and inked, especially issues where the creative teams seem to have been put together at the last minute. This issue may not be as polished and well-finished as it could be, but Breyfogle, perhaps with the input of the writing team, shows good control of layouts and storytelling.

The first five pages of this issue, showing Superman 1m’s fall from the Rocket Red suit we saw him astride above, are a good illustration of this. Click on pages 1, 3 and 5 to see how the layouts of the pages and the direction the reader normally reads (left to right, top to bottom) are used to give the reader the feeling of a rapidly accelerating fall from a great height.

The nuclear-armed suit that Superman looks up at and tries to force away from the Earth is up there at the top edge of page 3, whereas Superman himself is then shown plummeting down and to the right, culminating on that page with Superman looking in horror just off the page, down and to the right. Bottom right corners anticipating what is coming next, as this does, encourage readers to turn the page. As with Morrison's JLA 1,000,000 issue, above, there is plenty of exposition in the first few pages, so the reader gets up to speed quickly, but the creative team even manage to make a virtue out of this necessity. As the first 5 pages speed up, the creators gradually decrease the amount of plot exposition being conveyed by Superman 1m’s inner monologue, so the reader is naturally forced to follow the pictures in a much faster way as we reach Superman’s crash landing. Techniques like these make reading the comic feel like a breathless exciting process, even if these tricks don’t always register consciously with the reader.

Some comics can feel a little dead as we read them, and we aren’t sure why. The creative team’s inability to mesh the tone and feeling of whatever is being depicted with the physical experience of reading may be the problem. It’s not enough just to show us a picture of something happening, with a few words explaining what the pictures can’t convey, for us to become fully engaged with the story.

The rest of the comic is quite functional as we follow Superman 1m’s attempts to get his hands on the technology that he will need to start constructing a new solar computer. He takes Luthor up on Lex’s offer to assist him. After they fail to get into the present day Fortress of Solitude and visit a Luthorcorp laboratory, Luthor turns on Superman 1m, by trying to dissect him in order to study the Hourman virus. All this time, Superman 1m is gradually losing his powers, as they fail one by one.

Finally he realises that he has to meet up with his Justice Legion A colleagues and try to gain access to the JLA Watchtower, in order to build a solar computer, which they know is the only thing that will stop the Hourman Virus.

I like how Abnett and Lanning depict the relationship between Lois Lane and this temporary usurper of her husband’s position. The breakneck plotting means they don’t really have time to get to know each other really well, but then, why should they? The little distance they keep between each other is more realistic than if they’d had some kind of fan-pleasing heart-to-heart.

The script instead gives us a series of exchanges between Lois and this Kal Kent where they use irony and understatement playfully with each other. This gives unity, and a uniqueness, to the whole issue, and hints at the growing fondness that builds between them without hammering us over the head with anything.

Superboy #1,000,000 Karl Kesel and Tom Grummett (week 3)

Superboy 1,000,000 stands out from the other crossovers somewhat. Most of the other September issues put their ongoing stories to one side to tell a one-off story about either the future counterpart of the regular star, or the regular star’s encounter with the mind-blowing world of 85,271AD. Kesel tries to tell us stories of both characters, in both times, while still trying to integrate this issue into his longer ongoing series. His approach is more like that used by frustrated writers in a conventional crossover, where he tries to service the event and still push his own storylines forward at the same time. A new ongoing character, Dr Serling Roquette, is introduced and Superboy’s induction to Project Cadmus is featured. We also get the obviously big deal decision to go public with the existence of Project Cadmus.

Taken as part of this readthrough of DC One Million, this one feels less successful, as this feels too much like another small chapter of an endless soap opera. This is in contrast to how many of the creative teams involved grabbed the opportunity to step off the wearying treadmill of endless monthly production to tell sharp little one-off stories, or to revel in the extremely fresh and exotic far-distant environment that the crossover allowed them to take advantage of for one month.

Blah Blah Blah

Even looking outside the DC One Million crossover, pick any really great single superhero comic that has stayed with you over the years. Chances are it was a comic where the creative team sat down and asked ‘what is this comic about? What is its theme?’ and from there focused a large part of the comic on serving that theme, or driving the message of the comic home. This comic doesn’t do that. Instead we are given page after page of different plot-driven events and endless expositionary speechifying.

Blah Blah

There are lots of amusing ideas here. There is a certain sense of lightheartedness, and the characters are likeable, but it all feels a bit “Jurgens-y” if I can use that term. By Jurgens-y I mean that there is plenty of plot, but we just get the story told in a series of pictures rather than something that feels very controlled artistically to produce genuine reactions in the reader. For one thing the art style doesn’t really change depending on how the reader is supposed to react. Then there is just so much text, as everything is explained to the nth degree to the reader.

Blah

Certainly, a lot happens in this comic, in two eras, which is something at least. The reader gets value for money on their first reading of comics like these, as there is a lot going on and lots of text, but with everything explained and laid out so that all the comic has to offer is gotten by the reader first time through, there’s not much reason to go back to this comic again. Everything is in service to the busy plotting, rather than allowing the comic to serve themes and feelings and human insights. It would also seem that the need to fill each panel with plotting means that few panels or pages are allowed to be simply pleasing on the eye, as happens in Snejbjerg's Starman, or either of JH Williams III's contributions to this crossover.

An interesting thing that Kesel does is use some tampering by the representative from the future to reveal something of Superboy’s immediate future to him. If I was a regular reader, I’d want to find out more about the hints and glimpses shown on this double-page spread.

I don’t really mean to pick on Kesel and Grummett here, but I am trying to pin down why this comic, by the regular team who supposedly have a lot invested in these characters and concepts, doesn’t work as well, ‘as a comic’ as Abnett and Lanning’s Superman #1,000,000, which seems at first glance to be a quite simplistic crossover-installment handed in by a substitute team. DC published a lot of exposition heavy, plot-driven comics like Superboy 1,000,000 in the early 90’s, that arguably scared off a lot of readers whose curiosity had been whetted by the work of Moore and Miller. So it’s worth considering what they are doing differently to comics of other eras.

JLA #1,000,000 Grant Morrison and Howard Porter (week 3)

It’s strange that this is the only issue of this Morrison/JLA epic that is drawn by regular JLA artist Porter. He rises to the occasion here with page after page of interesting layouts and dynamic superheroics, in his distinctive JLA style.

In this one, the Justice League subs bench has to defend the Watchtower from what they see as an attack by the Justice Legion ‘A’. They don’t know that the future heroes are trying to get access to the equipment and power supplies they need to build a new Solaris that will neutralise the Hourman Virus. The stakes are high and we take the heroes dilemmas and choices seriously, but they are still presented in a colourful and fun way. The colour and fun of these ‘Reconstruction’-era comics is something that really strikes the reader in 2012. Tastes and fashions have changed considerably in mainstream superhero comics, as evidenced by all that grim and grit and dour compromise of both the DCnU and the brave new crypto-fascist dispensation that Captain America presides over in the Marvel Universe.

The first page illustrates the colour and fun I speak of, with a side-order of awe, wonder and smarts. (Click to enlarge)

This is really an info-dump page, but Morrison uses several techniques to lift it above the endless panels of people talking to each other that we got with Kesel’s Superboy. As well as the information, which is just as well to get out of the way early, so we can sit back and enjoy the rest of the comic, we get some heart in the genuine respect and fondness the 853^rd Century’s Finest Team have for each other. It is heartwarming to see this Superman call this Batman “Old friend” and know that some good things will endure. Then there are the fun ‘Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ entries using all kinds of novel and inspired terms and concepts to describe these two remarkable heroes.

Actually, Morrison adds a little conceit to this comic, in showing how entertainments of the future might come loaded with information. As well as the frequent updates on the histories and powers of the cast, from an entertainingly vast historical perspective, we also get reminders at the bottom of ever second page to ‘turn page’ – which highlights in a roundabout way that the future society would be so different to ours that people wouldn’t even know how to read a comic!

Then there are the nods to wild adventures and lives lived outside the pages of this or any comic: in this case the reference to the Pandora’s Box adventure. References like this make the fictional world seem open and boundless, instant of closed-in and restricted, as happens when everything ties directly into the plotting and continuity.

Finally, look how Superman’s feet are shattering the ground as he prepares to launch himself at the moon. Einstein gets name-checked in the dialogue box there, but it’s nice to see Newton’s laws of equal but opposite reaction get a look-in too. In the next full page splash Superman speaks the end of that famous phrase, but we don’t see any words in the balloon because, of course, he’s in the vacuum of space.

These preposterous heroes become a little more real when they are presented with little ‘true’ details like the cracking ground and the soundlessness of space. What could be more fun than the preposterous becoming real for just a little bit?

Morrison writes at length in his Supergods about how superhero writers have to make the same limited number of hackneyed plots entertaining month after month. In the case of this comic he takes the cliché of two super-teams meeting, fighting and then teaming up to defeat the bad guy, and through various techniques such as those shown on this page, gives a masterclass in how to make it work one more time.

DC One Million #3 - Morrison and Val Semeiks (Week 4)

In this issue all the threats and plotlines set in 1998 are resolved. To begin with things are in absolute chaos, but Morrison’s heroes are just that - heroes. Other multi-hero crossovers may involve most of the 'good guys' standing back and letting the main hero do the important stuff, but here, Morrison is careful to show that all the heroes are each doing what they can with the facet of the overall situation they are presented with. Oracle tries to co-ordinate everything, whilst the Atom, in her bloodstream works out how to defeat the Hourman Virus. He is successful in this, albeit it would take too long for his vaccine to be made and distributed. The Martian Manhunter and the Teen Titans of the day face off against Vandal Savage, whilst the rest of the JLA work furiously to construct a ‘Solar Computer’ which is the only means they have to defeat the virus within a short timeframe.

As elsewhere in Morrison’s JLA work, the JLA members from both timeframes show their true heroism in their behaviour, rather than just the fact that they are the ones fighting the bad guys. As the Virus makes them more paranoid, short-tempered and unable to concentrate, they constantly try to encourage and placate each other, and show compassion.

This is most obvious in the scenes between Batman 1m and his colleague Starman. Batman is enraged at Knight’s betrayal, and determined to beat a solution to their predicament out of him, even if it means killing him. In a moment of grace, Batman sees that Starman is the only one capable of helping them get their solar computer up and running, and he gives Farris his powerful Gravity Rod back. Batman puts Farris’ redemption into his own hands. A gesture that possibly redeems two lost souls at once.

In a series presenting such a hopeful vision of the future, it’s satisfying that the atavistic violence, selfishness and will-to-power that threatens everything is personified in Vandal Savage, a conqueror from mankind’s earliest days. Savage even faces off against the Martian Manhunter in some of Hitler’s set-aside super-tanks, to drive the point home. Vandal Savage is one of DC’s most potent characters, representing as he does, the evil that mankind has always been capable of since our beginnings, but he’s been woefully underused for most of his existence. To date, this is perhaps his best use in a major crossover, although he had a small but important ‘uncredited cameo’ in Final Crisis. Vandal is also Solaris’ most trusted partner and co-conspirator in the 853^rd Century, showing that the evil that has accompanied the human race is something that we will probably always have to contend with.

Thematicaly, it is satisfying that it is J’onn J’onnz, the kindest and most compassionate of the Justice League, whose attitude to the world is most unlike Savage’s, who gets to put Savage out of the picture.

In the remainder of the issue, Farris Knight’s gravity rod allows them to jumpstart the Solar Computer, which absorbs the Hourman Virus from all over the Earth. As it gathers more information and increases its intelligence, however, it starts to become the Tyrant Sun Solaris. This is a bad thing, and it’s up to the conflicted anti-hero Starman to step up and banish him from our universe, even if it means sacrificing his own life. It’s a great sequence. I wanted to post a picture or two from it to illustrate how good it is, but it all works as a long sequence of words and pictures, and just a couple of them don't do it justice. In any case, it’s a great climax to Farris Knight’s arc. Considering that no-one had heard of Farris Knight only a month before, Morrison has brought this character from nought to light-speed in 4 weeks! Literally ‘from Zero to Hero’.

Part of his story was told through revelations that the heroes trapped in the 853^rd made in their comics, but the main work was done in Robinson’s wonderful 1,000,000th issue of Starman.

Farris’ sacrifice is presented as something that puzzles himself. He’d tried all his life to escape the role of hero that he’d seemingly been born into, but here he was, being the greatest hero of the moment. Farris wonders if everything was pre-ordained from the beginning, but this is a very ‘Morrisonian’ line of thought. The rest of the series does show us that despite everyone’s attempts to change history, they each end up doing exactly what they’d done each time these events were set in motion. More than just presenting a cleverly constructed time-travel story, its clear that Morrison is once again trying to get across the insights he believes were granted to him during his "Katmandu experience".

With Vandal and the Tyrant Sun dealt with, all that’s left is for the heroes stuck in the 20^th Century to find a way to get to the 853^rd, or find some way to help their timelost companions save the Universe from Solaris’ nefarious plans.

We’ll get to that in my Week 4 blog. However, first there will be a brief Interlude to mourn those who fell during this great battle for the future of the DCU.

Responding to my Deck Log entry on Adventure Comics # 342 (Mar., 1966), in which Star Boy was expelled from the Legion of Super-Heroes for violating the Legion code against killing, correspondent Commando Cody indicted another Legionnaire for also breaking the code.

Cody posted:

Didn’t Lightning Lad kill Zaryan the Conqueror in Adventure 304, in the mission that resulted in his “death”?  It doesn’t explicitly say so, but it shows Zaryan in his invasion spacecraft without a space suit along with his crew of non-Asmovian robots.  Moments later, Lightning Lad destroys the invasion spacecraft with lightning bolts.

Even if Zaryan left the spacecraft before it was destroyed, Lightning Lad had no way of knowing that the spacecraft was only occupied by robots.

It’s a valid charge.  Initially, no procedural action was taken against Lightning Lad, due to the inconvenient circumstance of him being dead at the time, killed during his action against Zaryan.  But, while here in the real world, the death of the accused is a reliably permanent bar against prosecution, in the fictional conceit of comics, death isn't always so cut and dried.

So why didn’t the Legion pursue Lightning Lad’s violation of the Legion Code?  Especially given the swift and aggressive action it took in the case of Star Boy.

In light of this apparent nonfeasance of duty on the part of the Legion of Super-Heroes, I hereby appoint myself as a one-man board of review to investigate the matter.

THE ACCUSED.

Garth Ranzz, a.k.a. “Lightning Lad”

Planet of birth:  Winath

Lightning Lad, with the super-power to cast bolts of electricity, is one of the three charter members of the Legion of Super-Heroes.  He debuted, along with Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl, in Adventure Comics # 247 (Apr., 1958).  At the time, he was dubbed “Lightning Boy” and had to clap his hands to create bolts of lightning.  These were bugs that, within a couple of stories, were worked out and he settled into his lasting rendition as Lightning Lad.

As told in Adventure Comics # 308 (May, 1963), the youth named Garth Ranzz was forced to land on the wild and desolate planet of Korbal when the energy-cells of his space-flyer became exhausted.   One of the life-forms native to Korbal was the lightning-beast, capable of self-generating electrical charges.  Garth lured a herd of the beasts to his ship, hoping that their electrical energies would recharge the dead cells.  Instead, the creatures aimed their bolts at Garth, bathing him in a field of electricity.  Instead of killing him, the force turned Garth into a human dynamo, capable of discharging tremendous bolts of lightning.

Later, following the events which led to the origin of the Legion, Garth assumed the identity of Lightning Lad.

Lightning Lad, along with Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl, served as “the Big Three” of the Legion.  Other members were added to the group shortly after its inception, but in the early years, they tended to remain in the background.  So prominently were Cosmic Boy and Saturn Girl and Lightning Lad featured that, to reader identification, they were the Legion of Super-Heroes.

The Legion received its own series, starting with Adventure Comics # 300 (Sep., 1962), and the participation of the other members increased.  Yet, the Big Three were still treated as the team’s senior representatives.

THE VICTIM.

Zaryan, a.k.a. “Zaryan the Conqueror”

Planet of birth:  Brok

Very little is known about Zaryan the Conqueror.  In “The Stolen Super-Powers”, from Adventure Comics # 304 (Jan., 1963), we learn that he was an interplanetary criminal who once offered the Legion a bribe not to oppose his predatory attacks of other worlds.  Enraged when the heroes rejected his offer, Zaryan, with an army of warrior robots, flew an armed space-cruiser towards Earth, intending to attack and enslave its inhabitants.

Zaryan was presumed killed in space when Lightning Lad destroyed his ship before the self-styled conqueror could reach the Earth.

THE WITNESS.

Imra Ardeen, a.k.a. “Saturn Girl”

Planet of birth:  Titan, moon of Saturn

Saturn Girl is one of the three charter members of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

Like all Saturnians, Imra possesses the native power of telepathy.  One of the most powerful telepaths of her race, she can read the minds of others with crystal clarity, project her own thoughts across great range, and induce hypnotic commands.

Following the formation of the Legion, Imra adopted the identity of Saturn Girl.  At the time of the incident leading to this review, she was the Legion leader, a position she assumed under contentious circumstances.

She was the only witness to the alleged violation.

THE CIRCUMSTANCES LEADING TO THE VIOLATION.

The first few pages of “The Stolen Super-Powers” spotlight the election of the next leader of the Legion of Super-Heroes.  This is the first reference to such a proceeding or that the Legion even had someone in charge.  (Cosmic Boy would later be established as the first Legion leader, retroactively, in a text piece appearing in Adventure Comics # 352 [Jan., 1967].)

With the entire membership present---except for Superboy and Supergirl, who are tied up in their respective time-eras---the vote is taken.  Under vaguely questionable circumstances, Saturn Girl is unanimously elected as the Super-Hero Club’s new leader.  That “vaguely questionable” qualifier is erased when Saturn Girl reveals, in a thought-balloon, that she used her power of telepathy to compel all of the other Legionnaires to vote for her.  As soon as she takes her seat in the big chair at the head of the meeting table, she turns into a self-serving, grade-A shrew.

First, she squanders the club’s $200,000 treasury on medallions bearing her image, which she requires all of the other Legionnaires to wear.  Then she forces them to undergo trials of their individual super-powers, failure of which means suspension from duty.

Not surprisingly, given her conduct to this point, Saturn Girl fails each member’s performance for insignificant details.  By the time Commander Loring of the World-Wide Police alerts the team to Zaryan’s imminent attack, she’s the only Legionnaire left on active duty.  The rest of the teen heroes have been benched.  Donning an anti-gravity space suit, S.G. swoops off to meet the threat, but not before tossing her fellow members a few snarky insults over their “incompetency”.

What we, and the Legionnaires, don’t know---and won’t find out until after it’s all over---is that, just before the election, Saturn Girl was tipped off to Zaryan’s invasion threat by the ever-helpful Trylop Council of Mernl.  Moreover, the council’s probability computer predicted with certainty that one Legionnaire would die in the coming battle.

This explains all of her severe actions.  She deliberately rigged the election in her behalf, so that, as Legion leader, she could suspend the other members.  Nobly, she ensured that she would be the only Legionnaire to confront Zaryan the Conqueror and, thus, would be the fatality foretold by the Trylop Council’s computer.

Saturn Girl hedged her bets, though.  The medallions she forced the other members to wear temporarily bestowed her with super-powers identical to theirs.  Armed with the might of fourteen Legionnaires, she hoped to put paid to Zaryan’s invasion effort before she became a statistic.

It didn’t quite work out that way.

THE EVENTS OF THE VIOLATION.

Back on Earth, minutes after Saturn Girl takes off to meet Zaryan’s attack ship, Lightning Lad emerges from the Legion clubhouse wearing a space suit equipped with an advanced anti-gravity unit.  Defying orders, he launches himself spaceward, in pursuit of the new Legion leader.

Catching up to the girl Legionnaire, Lightning Lad reveals that he is aware of her scheme.  As their foe’s spaceship looms into view, Saturn Girl orders him to return to Earth.

Lightning Lad refuses, flashing ahead of her.  “ . . . I won’t let you sacrifice your life for me or the others!”

“His anti-gravity power-unit is stronger than mine!” bemoans Saturn Girl.  “I can’t . . . overtake him!”

Moments later, the battle is joined.  Lightning Lad unleashes a barrage of electrical bolts at Zaryan’s invasion craft.  In the same instant, the youth is struck by a freeze-ray fired from the enemy ship.

An eye-blink later---as Saturn Girl watches in horror---Zaryan’s space-cruiser is destroyed and Lightning Lad is mortally wounded.

AFTERMATH.

With Zaryan’s ship reduced to scrap, Saturn Girl carries the stricken Lightning Lad back to Earth and the front lawn of the Legion clubhouse.

With his last gasps, the dying Legionnaire explains how Mon-El, the Legion member forced to live in the Phantom Zone, had witnessed Saturn Girl receiving the ominous warning from the Trylop Council.  Observing her subsequent actions invisibly from the Zone, Mon-El deduced Saturn Girl’s plan.  However, sunspot disturbances had prevented Mon from telepathically tipping off the rest of the Legion.

Almost too late, the sunspot activity subsided long enough for Mon-El to get a telepathic message through to Lightning Lad.

Then, with a final good-bye, Lightning Lad breathes his last.

It’s a tragic milestone for the Legion of Super-Heroes---the first time a Legionnaire has fallen in the line of duty.  And it gets the kind of send-off you’d expect.

Superboy and Supergirl, with Lori Lemaris in tow, arrive from the twentieth century to attend the funeral.  Mon-El is there, as well, having taken the temporary XY-4 serum cure, enabling him to spend a few minutes in the corporeal world.

Flags across the universe are lowered to half-staff in the Legionnaire’s memory.

Lightning Lad’s body is placed in a transparent sarcophagus.  Over his resting place, an electrical arc crashes between the twin spheres of a futuristic Van de Graaff generator, in perpetual tribute to the fallen super-hero.

The story ends on this downbeat note.  This is no hallucination or hoax.  There is no last-minute save.  The Legionnaire called Lightning Lad is dead.

This review is hereby recessed.  It will resume shortly, with further finding of fact.

Last week, I wrote about the best sidekicks in comic books. As I was working on my list, I remembered a lot of great sidekicks that have appeared in other media. Instead of tossing them all into one big list, I decided to split them off with a second list. So here you go, my list of the best sidekicks in movies, television, cartoons and classic literature.

15. Sylvester Jr.: Sylvester Jr. fulfills a classic sidekick role: the sidekick who’s actually smarter than the mentor. In this case, Sylvester Sr. tries to teach his son how to catch a kickboxing kangaroo and fails miserably. The son sees through his father’s shenanigans. He puts up with his dad because that’s what sons are supposed to do and he’s often more successful than the senior Sylvester. It’s a quietly subversive role, upending the status quo to great delight.

14. Marcus Brody: Marcus Brody experienced a grand transformation from the first Indiana Jones movie to the third. In the first movie, Brody was a bit of a mentor. He was the one who offered advice at home before Indy raced off on another grand adventure. In the third movie, Brody got caught up in the adventure as well and found himself halfway around the world. He was the comic relief, ruining the heroic ride into the sunset by riding his horse backwards. Yet he also provided a positive function as an academic expert.

13. Scrappy Doo: Scrappy is one of the more contentious choices on my list. When he was added to the Scooby Doo show, he was one of the first sidekicks to be widely panned. Fans didn’t like the way he seemed to push Scooby, the titular star of the series, out of the spotlight. But I was young enough to love the brash, young character. I liked his fighting spirit, his put-up-your-dukes attitude and his willingness to rush headlong into trouble. Believe it or not, I still own the Scrappy Doo statue I bought as a kid.

12. Morgan Grimes: Sidekicks may have fallen out of favor in comic books, but they seem to be growing in importance on television. After all, every good hero needs someone to hang out with. One of my recent favorites is Chuck’s boyhood best friend, Morgan Grimes. “The beard” is a wonderful source of comic relief. But he’s also there to challenge Chuck when Chuck’s new spy life draws him too far away from his friends and family. Morgan has perhaps the greatest character arc of anyone on the show, eventually becoming the responsible manager of the BuyMore and an effective member of the spy team.

11. Hadji: I debated whether or not to include Hadji on this list. My concern wasn’t about Hadji’s qualifications as a cool character. He’s definitely cool- and that’s not easy to pull off with an Indian accent. He was smart, inventive and calm under pressure. He was also one of the first international characters that I was exposed to in my young life. No, my concern is that Hadji doesn’t qualify as a sidekick as I could see the argument that he was Jonny Quest’s partner rather than his tagalong.

10. Jan, Jace and Blip/Zan, Jayna and Gleek: Here’s another potentially contentious choice. In the 1960s, Hanna-Barbera introduced the outer space superhero Space Ghost and gave him not one but three sidekicks: the teenaged twins Jan and Jace and the sputtering space monkey Blip. Hanna-Barbera later used the same formula on Super Friends. This time, the twin teenagers, Zan and Jayna, were aliens with their own set of superpowers. Gleek, however, was still a sputtering monkey. I’ll admit that I like Zan and Jayna. I was a kid at the time and, if you were my age, you would have probably liked them too. They also had a memorable catchphrase- “super powers activate!”- that was easy to emulate as a kid, and easy to mock as an adult.

9. Tonto: Tonto is one of the greatest sidekicks in any medium. He’s the Lone Ranger’s silent partner and, like many great sidekicks, often smarter than his lead. At the very least, Tonto is well versed in hunting, tracking and other skills of the wild. However, Tonto is held back by the racial stereotypes of the time. His pidgin English is embarrassing. It remains to be seen whether Johnny Depp can rehabilitate the character for a modern audience in the upcoming Lone Ranger movie.

8. Falstaff: That’s right: I included the Super Friends and Shakespeare on the same list. Falstaff is one of the earliest sidekicks. Shakespeare included a lot of clown characters as comic relief in his plays. But Falstaff became more than a source of occasional laughter. He was a truehearted friend. He was a brave warrior, if prone to bouts of braggadocio. And he was one of the first supporting characters to become a star in his own right. He’s the model for many a sidekick today. Plus, like a lot of great sidekicks, he’s instantly recognizable.

7. Amy Pond and Rory Williams (Or Your Favorite Dr. Who Companion): I’ve heard it said that you never forget your first doctor but I found my first exposure to Dr. Who to be uninspiring. However, the infectious delight of my daughters rubbed off on me and I’ve enjoyed recent episodes, despite my own intransigence. My third doctor (the eleventh overall) is my favorite. Similarly, I’m fond of his two companions: the young couple Rory Williams and Amy Pond. Their relationship is as interesting to me as their adventures. I’m especially intrigued by their indecision whether to embrace the exotic adventures of the Doctor or the comfortable surroundings of home. Feel free to insert your favorite Doctor Who companion in this space, whether it’s Sarah Jane, K-9 or Rose.

6. Kato: The best sidekicks often outshine their mentors. That’s often been the case with Kato, the regular companion to the Green Hornet. At first, Kato was little more than a butler. But in the live action series, Kato learned to kick butt. He was played by martial arts expert Bruce Lee and quickly became a fan favorite. Now, it’s hard to imagine the Green Hornet without his quiet right hand man.

5. Dr. Watson: There are a number of reasons why sidekicks are introduced. One of the most persistent is that the hero needs someone to talk to. That’s why Batman was paired with Robin and Bucky was given to Captain America. And that’s why Sherlock Holmes has Dr. Watson at his side. Dr. Watson is our window into the weird world and impenetrable mind of the great detective. We learn what Holmes is thinking because he has to explain it to Watson. Yet the best Watsons are more than windows. They give as good as they get- teasing Sherlock with friendly familiarity. Plus, as a former soldier and a doctor, Watson is a valuable guy to have around.

4. C-3PO and R2-D2: Another persistent reason to introduce a sidekick is the need to ground the story in reality and humanity. George Lucas ironically did this by giving us a couple of droids. Despite his bumbling nature, C-3PO often spoke for us by commenting on the unbelievable nature of events and expressing the fears we might have in his place. R2-D2 was even better as C-3PO’s counterpoint. He was incredibly expressive and sarcastic, despite speaking only in squeaks and whistles. Plus, his plucky attitude was inspirational for those of us who didn’t have the Force.

3. The Scoobies: Joss Whedon put together the perfect team of sidekicks for Buffy the Vampire Slayer and, in doing so, showed us the greatest reason why these types of characters exist. They are companions in the truest sense of the word. They are friends that become family. Robin is like a son to Batman. Watson is like a brother to Holmes. The Scoobies are Buffy’s best friends and the family she makes for herself: Willow, Xander, Cordelia, Oz, Anya, Tara, Dawn, Spike and yes, even Andrew.

2. Sancho Panza: Sancho Panza is the Platonic ideal of a sidekick. He’s the original. Those who came before him are like prototypes before he perfected the form. He’s comic relief. He’s smarter than the lead character. He’s world-wise and world-weary. He’s our point of view into the oddness that surrounds us. He is the sidekick of sidekicks.

Yet, despite those praises, I’d put one sidekick ahead of Sancho Panza…

1. Samwise Gamgee: Can you think of another character that you’d rather have at your side? JRR Tolkien reputedly based the character on the concept of the batman- the military assistant in the British army. The batman takes care of his master’s needs so that he can focus on the fight ahead. In the Lord of the Rings, Sam takes care of the Frodo’s needs so that Frodo can focus on his quest to destroy the ring. Sam is the one who cooks. Sam is the one who stands guard so his master can sleep. Sam is the one who sings a song to brighten his master’s mood. Sam is the one who rations the food so that they’ll have enough for the trip back. Yet Tolkien elevated Sam beyond a simple servant. Sam sees the world with wonder in his eyes, marveling at elves and later oliphaunts. Sam is also wise beyond his years, as evidenced by his commentary upon the difference in stories between those reading them and those living in them. And Sam becomes the true hero, rescuing Frodo from captivity and carrying him on his back to their final destination.

That’s my list. Who’s on yours?

By Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

He’s the evil doppelganger of Batman, the giggling evil to the Dark Knight’s humorless heroism, the garish chaos to the Caped Crusader’s dark order. He’s The Joker, and after a year absent from all DC Comics, he’s back for what DC is calling “the seminal Joker event of our time.”

That’s saying a lot, given the many terrific stories starring the Clown Prince of Crime. But this tale is helmed by the acclaimed Scott Snyder, whose recent “Court of Owls” Bat-saga made Batman DC’s No. One seller (displacing Justice League), and whose American Vampire continues to be the backbone of DC’s Vertigo line.

When "Death of a Family" first appears in a given title, it features a Joker face that opens to reveal the actual cover, revealing the face of the book's star. The following issues have regular covers.

The new story is “Death of a Family,” playing off “Death in the Family,” a famous 1980s story wherein The Joker bludgeoned the second Robin to death with a crowbar. (That Boy Wonder, Jason Todd, has since been resurrected as the anti-hero Red Hood.) In this story, The Joker isn’t trying to kill Batman – instead, he’s going after the hero’s extended family, including all the Robins past and present, Batgirl, Commissioner Gordon, Alfred and even a few villains, like Catwoman, Harley Quinn and Penguin.

Why? Well, it’s hard to figure out The Joker at the best of times. So I asked Snyder himself in a telephone interview to describe his favorite villain’s mental state.

“[The Joker] sees himself in our story really as sort of Batman’s greatest ally,” Snyder said. “He has this strange belief that Batman is this kind of Bat-king of Gotham.  And that he serves him the way a court jester historically has served the king … to bring the king the bad news. But in this case he sees himself as delivering the worst news of Batman’s own heart, his own nightmares, in the form of these horrifying challenges that Batman can then overcome and become stronger and [a] more resilient king of the city.”

Those challenges, unfortunately, mean the elimination of just about everyone Batman knows.

“The Joker in our story … really believes that the family, the Bat-family – Nightwing and Red Hood and Batgirl and Robin and Red Robin – all sort of do Batman a terrible service,” Snyder said. “Because instead of challenging him and making him a stronger, fiercer king, they try to convince him that whoever he is beneath the mask is more important, and that he’s human and tender and should have feelings for people, and should sort of temper the qualities that make him a great king of Gotham.”

Which doesn’t sit well with The Joker, who sees them “as a kind of false royal court,” Snyder said. “And there’s a bit of Peter Pan touch to him as well in our story, where essentially what Joker says to Batman, the driving impulse behind his actions here, has to do with this notion he has that Batman, deep down, wants to go back to the days where he didn’t have a family.”

Which parents the world over can almost – almost – understand.

“As the father of young children, that’s really where the story comes from for me,” Snyder said. “[It] is that fear you get when you have kids and a family, of how frightening the world becomes all of a sudden. And that desire for just two minutes of refuge from worrying about your kids.”

So The Joker, Snyder says, believes that Batman deep down wants his family gone, but just won’t admit it. And, therefore, as his “greatest ally,” the Harlequin of Hate will cheerfully help the Dark Knight despite himself, by disposing of all that baggage.

“That’s really the definition of how our Joker works in this story,” Snyder said, who hopes readers will find him not only “terrifying,” but “intimately vicious.” Because, like all good villains, you can almost understand The Joker if you tilt your head just right – and suspend your own moral code.

“That’s the worst part!” laughs Snyder, who sometimes worries about his own sanity as he dreams up these terrible stories at his kid’s soccer practice or in the grocery store. “[The Joker] takes a kernel of truth, or some tiny sliver of truth, in something that you feel or think, your worst fear, honestly, about yourself, and sort of expands it until he makes you believe that it’s kind of the totality of who you are and what you want to be true. And that’s why to me he’s the greatest villain in literature.”

Part of what Snyder sees as so terrifying about The Joker is that horrible insight into other people’s fears. Plus, there are his terrible eyes.

“It’s really tough to stare Joker in those eyes, and convince yourself he’s just a man,” Snyder said. “Especially because the eyes don’t work like normal eyes. The pupils don’t contract in the light and expand in the darkness, or expand with emotion the way they’re supposed to. They’re just these horrible fixed points.”

Which makes him Snyder’s favorite villain.

“He is kind of like all the things, or that core thing that makes a great villain, the capacity for a villain to make you afraid of yourself, rather than just afraid of him,” he continued. “And he does it to everybody that he meets. In Batman #15 he has this two-minute conversation with [Gotham Police Detective] Harvey Bullock, who’s sort of yelling at him from a distance for a moment. And all he has to do is look at Harvey with those terrible eyes, and say something to him that paralyzes him, about Harvey’s own worst fear about himself. He is that kind of nightmarish, and hilariously nightmarish, character that can look at you, size you up, and say the thing you’re most terrified of hearing.”

And while that scene is chilling, there’s plenty of delightful Joker creepiness across DC’s current line of Batman books, involving lots of characters. “Death of a Family” has its roots in 2011’s Detective Comics #1, wherein The Joker happily acquiesced to having his face surgically removed by another villain. That gives him his most frightening appearance yet, with his old face strapped precariously onto his exposed facial muscles. But the story really launched in the October issues of Batgirl, Batman and Catwoman, spreading into five other titles in November through January, and wrapping up in Batman #17 in February. That means a lot more writers than just Snyder.

“Yeah! It’s fun!” he laughed. “When you realize the story is gonna be big enough to touch the lives of the other Bat-characters you kind of have a choice. The choice is either to write those characters into Batman and have the other writers coordinate around you, or to admit that they know the characters and write them better than you could, and honestly, to respect the fact that the stories that they’re gonna come up with if you give them room are gonna be better than the stories you could come up with for those characters, and more frightening with The Joker, and more deeply challenging for those characters.”

Those writers include Gail Simone on Batgirl #13-16, Ann Nocenti on Catwoman #13-14, John Layman on Detective #15-16 (Joker vs. The Penguin), Roam Glass on Suicide Squad #14-15 (featuring Harley Quinn), Peter Tomasi on Batman & Robin #15-16, Kyle Higgins on Nightwing #15-16, Scott Lobdell on Red Hood and the Outlaws #15-16 and Teen Titans #15-16. Snyder says he’s excited by how each wrtier puts his own “spin” on the weird psychology Snyder has crafted for The Joker in Batman #13-17. 

 “I really do try to stay out of their way,” he continued. “I just say, ‘Look, here’s a point in the story about five months from now, there’ll be a chance for Joker to come after your character and the only rule is he has to be this Joker that you’re reading in Batman. Y’know, he has to act the same way. So here he is, you know, and his initiative has to be incredibly vicious. He can see anything that’s happened to your character over the last year, you can use any ammunition you want, anything in your series he can come after. Nothing’s off limits. But I want this to be the story where it’s your chance to have your character face The Joker like they’ve never faced him before.

That’s new, Snyder explained, most of these characters have only faced The Joker in conjunction with his vendetta against Batman. “He’s only ever kinda touched the lives of Barbara [Gordon, who is Batgirl] when he was going after Commissioner Gordon … or Jason when he was trying to break Batman in ‘Death in the Family.’ So this is really him looking them in the eye for the first time, or almost the first time, and saying ‘I’m coming after you individually to break you the way I would break Batman.’”

In addition to the skin mask, Joker’s appearance also suggests that of a car mechanic, with a toolbelt and coverall with the name “Joe” stenciled on the chest. That’s because he has a lot of work to do, not only getting rid of the Bat-family, but doing it according to his twisted agenda.

“He plans on killing them,” Snyder says of the Bat-family. “But what he wants to do is … break them first. And sort of show them his point of view. He wants to ruin them and show them why they’re not worthy of sitting at the table with Batman. And then instead of killing them, what he’s claimed so far is that … Batman will kill them for him. That when the truth is exposed, essentially, he’s like ‘that’s when it will be time for you to die by his hand, when he admits what he really wants, you’ll all go up in flames.’”

Part of that is a mystery that Joker hints Batman is keeping from his “family,” and Batman’s insistence – against all evidence – that The Joker doesn’t know the secret identities of all the Bat-characters. Those issues will be resolved as well, Snyder said, in the course of “super creepy” stories across the line.

“I’m really proud of the writers and the artists in the Bat-family for this one,” he said. “I think it’s gonna turn out to be something especially horrific and wonderful. … And just in time for Christmas!”

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal atcapncomics@aol.com

Here’s a quick quiz to start things off:

Which one of the following individuals did not visit the planet Krypton during the Silver Age (which I demark as 1956-68)?

A.  Superman

B.  Jimmy Olsen

C.  Supergirl

D.  Professor Amos Dunn

E.   Lex Luthor

F.   Batman

G.  Lois Lane

After Mort Weisinger took over as editor of the Superman titles there came a mob of Krypton survivors:  Supergirl, Zor-El and Alura, the Phantom Zone prisoners, Super-Monkey, Dev-Em and his parents, the entire population of Kandor.  So many Kryptonians wound up on Earth, in fact, that one had to begin to wonder if anyone other than Jor-El and Lara actually perished in the planet’s destruction.  In a 1964 “Metropolis Mailbag”, reader Ned Snively, of Winter Haven, Florida, took Mort to task for the proliferation of living Kryptonians.

Ye Olde Editor replied that, yes, Ned did have a point; however, all of these survivors were just a tiny fraction of the many billions who populated Krypton, and it did not stretch the odds incredibly for a handful to survive. 

But what about the reverse?   What about all those visitors from Earth to Krypton?  It’s a good thing that nobody ever pressed Weisinger to explain that.  Puzzling out the answer to that one probably would have made his puzzler sore.  It often seemed that time-travel in the Silver Age was about as easy as booking a flight to Vegas, which made the fact that Krypton had exploded some thirty years before no more an inconvenience than standing in line at customs.

Not surprisingly, it was Superman himself who made the most visits to his home planet during the Silver Age.  Thanks to his super-memory and his mind-prober ray, the Man of Steel’s recollexions of life on Krypton were robust---which was fortunate, since the first two times he went home came strictly by accident.  That meant no awkward moments trying to figure out which restroom to use or any embarrassing gaffes in punching up your order from the food-rob.

The Man of Steel’s first Silver-Age trip home was an unexpected gift from Jimmy Olsen.  In a three-part “novel” appearing in Superman # 123 (Aug., 1958), Jimbo comes into possession of a magic totem possessing the power to grant three wishes.  In atypical selflessness, Jimmy decides to use his three wishes on behalf of his super-pal.  Each wish gets a chapter to show the results of Jimmy’s generosity.  Unfortunately, the first two wishes didn’t turn out as good as Jim had hoped, but he feels he's come up with a winner on his final one.  In order to surprise the Metropolis Marvel, the cub reporter types his wish for Superman to meet his parents.

Instantly, Superman is whisked back to Krypton.  He's overjoyed to see the long-dead sights of his childhood, but when he seeks to fulfil his fondest desire---to see his parents again---he learns that he has been sent too far into the past.  His father, Jor-El, is a young bachelor who has not yet established himself as a great scientist.  At the moment Superman sees him, young Jor-El is hot-footing it to a date with the cute girl in the robot-assembly department.  This would be Lara, the woman who was Superman’s mother.  Or will be.  (Time-travel stories always wreak havoc with the tenses.)

As it turns out, Jimmy was having another one of his “Gilligan” moments when he typed out his last wish for the Man of Steel.  Instead of typing out a wish that Superman meet his parents, the kid’s fumble-fingers tapped out a request that Superman mate his parents.  This being the innocent Silver Age, “mate” translated to causing Jor-El and Lara to fall in love and marry, and not the first thing that came to all of your dirty minds.

There's some fol-de-rol about Jor-El and Lara being undercover agents for the Krypton Bureau of Investigation and being inadvertently convicted along with the renegade they were assigned to investigate.  Ultimately, thanks to Superman’s help, they recapture the villain and clear their names.  Their close call makes Jor-El and Lara realise that they have fallen in love, and when Jor pops the question to Lara, Superman is magically returned to present-day Earth.

The Man of Steel has no-one to blame but himself for the next mischance that sends him back in time to Krypton---and to one of the classic Superman stories of all time:  “Superman’s Return to Krypton”, from Superman # 141 (Nov., 1960). 

When astronomers spot a planet-sized beast heading for Earth, Superman streaks into outer space to confront it.  Caught up in pursuing the alien beastie, the Man of Steel accidentally zips through time and space, winding up in a red-sun system.  Luckily, he manages to land on the nearest planet a fraction of a second before the red solar radiation steals his super-powers.

Snooping around, a stunned Superman discovers that he has stranded himself on Krypton, before the time of his birth.

In one of those convenient Silver-Age coïncidences, Superman comes across a Kryptonian motion-picture crew shooting a science-fiction film and gets mistaken for an extra.  This provides him with money and an excuse for wearing his costume.  During a break in the shooting, he heads into the city to figure out how much time there is before the big bang. 

He gets his answer when a video-news flash announces the wedding of Jor-El and Lara.  Drawn by the desire to see them again and to tell them who he is, Superman attends the ceremony.  This scene creates the first of a series of emotional set-pieces that makes this story so memorable.

Superman sees his parents, their faces effused with a glow of happiness, and the throng of merry well-wishers.  In a moment of terrible frustration, he cannot bring himself to destroy their moment of joy by telling them of Krypton’s fate. 

In the next panel, the Man of Steel is shown, gazing down at the city from his hotel-room balcony, as he thinks, “Look at them down there . . . living . . . laughing . . . loving . . . blind to the crashing doom that will soon destroy them all!” 

The scene showing the celebration of the newlyweds and their friends juxtaposed to that single panel of Superman, standing apart, alone, looking on sullenly, brings home the tragedy of Krypton’s destruction.  For the first time in any story, the people of Krypton were more than just background setting or props to advance the plot.  In giving them life, writer Jerry Siegel made grimly real the doom that would shortly snuff it out.

Superman determines to cheat destiny and save his people.  Posing as a student of science, he ingratiates himself with Jor-El, who takes him on as an apprentice.  And at a dinner party, he meets famous emotion-movie actress Lyla Lerrol.  Here, the story divides into two distinct plots.  One concerns Superman’s efforts to help Jor-El, who has since discovered the fact of Krypton’s imminent demise on his own, and find a way to rescue the population.  The other tells of the growing romance between Superman and Lyla.

In the former, the Man of Steel finds himself thwarted by fate at every turn; in the latter, he succeeds beyond all obstacles.  In a remarkably poignant sequence, the romance of Superman and Lyla blooms into love, and in its wake, Kal-El of Krypton discovers that he no longer fears the certainty of death when his world disintegrates.  He proposes to Lyla and she happily accepts.  Yet, fate jerks Superman’s chain one more time, and he is inadvertently taken away from Krypton before he can marry Lyla or die in the explosion of his world.  The ending is downbeat, a rare thing for a DC tale of the time.

Superman made his last Silver-Age time-trip to the world of his birth on purpose, and it’s only a brief episode in the story “Secret of Kryptonite Six”, from Action Comics # 310 (Mar., 1964). 

When the Man of Steel is unable to find a cure for a deadly spotted plague which has infected Lori Lemaris and the rest of the Atlanteans, he reluctantly accepts an offer of help from Phantom-Zone prisoner Jax-Ur, who claims to know an antidote.  The ingredients of this antidote can only be found in the Scarlet Jungle, so Superman uses a time-bubble to transport himself and Jax-Ur back to Krypton.  While on Krypton, the two interact with no-one else, so this outing lacks the cachet of dealing with a doomed people, as Superman’s previous visits did. 

They are on Krypton only a few hours, but it is sufficient time for Jax-Ur enact a cunning plan which reaches fruition when they return to present-day Earth.  Naturally, the villain’s scheme fails, and Superman fans are left with yet another addition to the list of various forms of kryptonite to keep straight.

Logically, Supergirl would be at home on old Krypton even more than her cousin, since she spent the first fifteen years of her life in Kryptonian society, growing up in Argo City.  Yet, she made only one Silver-Age time-trip to her home world, in “The Last Days of Superman”, from Superman # 156 (Oct., 1962), and it is a throwaway scene, at that.  When the Man of Steel is believed to be dying of Virus X, the Girl of Steel travels back to Krypton to see if her people discovered a cure.  They hadn’t.

On the other hand, Superman’s pal, Jimmy Olsen, was practically a native.  He made only two time-trips to Krypton, but he managed to blend right in.  In the first instance, “How Jimmy Olsen First Met Superman”, from Jimmy Olsen # 36 (Apr., 1959), Jimmy responds to an inventor’s help-wanted ad, seeking volunteers to test a new time-machine.  And since, apparently, the laws of physics are no bar to a really skilled handyman with a good set of tools, when Jimbo tries out the machine, he finds himself transported to Krypton.

Following a minor brush with the law, Jimmy has the time of his life, since Krypton, it appears, has a socialist government---something not touched upon in the other tales.  At every turn, Jim finds free, government-provided clothing, anti-gravity belts, sporting equipment, transportation, and food.  Through a chance encounter, and the fact that Jor-El and Lara were obviously willing to entrust their only child to a fellow who walks up and introduces himself as “Jim-My Ol-Sen from out of town”, Jimmy becomes Kal-El’s baby sitter.  Jor-El and Lara’s cavalier attitude toward child care is a moot point, however, given that the next day, Krypton explodes.  Jimmy makes it back to his time-ship just in time to have a ringside seat to the disaster.

The dauntless cub reporter’s second trip to the K-world---in “Olsen’s Time-Trip to Save Krypton”, from Jimmy Olsen # 101 (Apr., 1967)---didn’t go quite as smoothly.  Inspired by ceremonies in Kandor honouring Superman’s home world, Jimmy decides to go back in time and prevent the destruction of Krypton.  Jim gets his hands on a do-it-yourself home time-machine kit, and following the easy instructions, finds himself on Krypton before he can say “Jeepers!”  Already dressed for the occasion in Official Kryptonian Clothing and Official Kryptonian Anti-Gravity Boots, Jimmy fits right in.  A man with a mission, he hurries down to the Science Council, only to get there just as the esteemed greybeards are having a good chuckle over that “crackpot” Jor-El’s predictions of doom.

Deciding that trying to convince the Science Council himself would only get him fitted for an Official Kryptonian Straitjacket, Jimmy goes to see Jor-El and Lara.  He doesn’t make the good impression he made the first time, and even baby Kal-El throws a tantrum over Jimmy.  Jor-El tosses him out on his ear.

Jimmy gets the idea to pass himself off as a psychic, using his knowledge of Kryptonian history to “predict” events.  He figures, once he persuades the populace that he can, indeed, predict the future, then they will listen to him when he “foretells” the planet’s destruction. 

This results in a scene which is faintly chilling:  Jimmy and a girl he has befriended are travelling on a monorail when, almost too late, he remembers that this particular train is destined to derail and plunge into a river below, killing all aboard.  He grabs the girl and leaps from the monorail moments before the disaster.  A guilt-ridden Jim watches the trapped, terror-stricken passengers slowly drown.  Then, a more macabre realisation kicks in---that even if he had saved them, it would only be to die days later when Krypton explodes.

Despite his best efforts, the History Can’t Be Changed rule kicks in, and Jimmy returns to Earth in his own time, a sadder but wiser fellow.

Professor Amos Dunn was the one man who did not have to travel through time to visit Krypton.  He visited Superman’s world while it was still around.  We learn about this in “The Man Who Saved Kal-El’s Life’, from Action Comics # 281 (Oct., 1961).  Dunn is a brilliant scientist in the field of electricity.  In the 1920’s, he invents a device for sending radio signals through space.  Eventually, these signals reach Krypton, where Jor-El receives them and translates them.  This initiates a series of interplanetary discussions between the two scientists. 

When Jor-El learns of Krypton’s imminent doom, he seeks Professor Dunn’s help.  Jor-El has invented a “matter-radio”---what we would now call a teleportation device---but it requires both a sending and a receiving station.  Jor-El relays instructions on how to build the matter-radio transmitter, and after building it, Dunn teleports to Krypton.  Jor-El makes Dunn aware of the situation.  The professor agrees to return to Earth and arrange to have thousands of receiving stations built, in order that the population of Krypton can be teleported to Earth.

During Dunn's visit, baby Kal-El is bitten by a venomous sea snake, and the professor performs emergency first-aid to save the toddler’s life (hence the story’s title).

Professor Dunn returns to Earth and gets to work.  However, Jor-El overestimated the time left before the end.  He desperately radios Dunn to begin the teleportation process, but Dunn hasn’t worked out the bugs in his machine and it won’t operate.  He can only listen helplessly to Krypton’s final screams.

By now, you start getting the idea that one of the reasons why Jor-El couldn’t finish the work on his rescue rocket in time was he kept getting interrupted by a constant stream of strangers showing up at his door.

“Whew!  That Kal was a nice enough chap, but I’m glad he’s gone, Lara.”

“So am I.  He always had the oddest expression on his face whenever he looked at me.  It was creepy.  Anyway, it’ll be nice to finally have some time to ourselves.”

Ding dong!

“I’ll get it, darling.”

“Rao! Who is it, now?”

“Jor, do you know a Jim-My Ol-Sen?”

“Never heard of him!”

“He says he’s from out of town.”

Not every time-traveller journeyed to Krypton with the noble goal of saving its people from doom, however.  At least two visitors from Earth had more self-interest in mind.

Superman # 170 (Jul., 1964) tells the story “If Lex Luthor Were Superman’s Father”.  Despite being mislabeled as an Imaginary Story on the cover, this improbable tale is presented as an actual event in the life of Superman, who makes only a three-panel walk-on at the end.

Following yet another escape from prison, Lex Luthor reviews life on Krypton through his time-scope and concocts a scheme from ‘way out of left field, even for him.  He intends to travel to Krypton, back to the time before Jor-El and Lara became engaged.  Then, he will out-woo Jor-El and capture Lara’s heart.  Consequently, they will marry and have the son who will eventually grow up on Earth to become Superman.  

Thus, Luthor figures, when he returns to present-day Earth, the Man of Steel will no longer interfere with his crimes, since Superman wouldn’t dare oppose his own father.

Wearing a space uniform equipped with an anti-gravity amulet to let him walk on the much denser Krypton, Luthor uses his modified spaceship to travel back in time to Superman’s world.  Upon landing (and apparently just missing Superman on his first visit home, when he brought his parents together), he claims to be “Luthor the Noble”, a hero from another planet.  He establishes his bona fides by trying to warn the people of Kandor about their city’s imminent abduction by Brainiac.  He is disbelieved by almost everyone, including Jor-El, who refuses to listen to Luthor’s warning.  Lara, now working as Jor’s lab assistant, believes Luthor, however. 

When Brainiac strikes, Luthor is proven correct, and Lara chastises Jor-El for not heeding him.

This moves “Luthor the Noble” to the inside track with Lara, and he begins to court her in earnest.  Lara warms up to the attention, since Jor-El is too wrapped up in his experiments to even notice.  Better still, a few days later, Jor-El becomes trapped under the sea when a rock-slide traps his one-man aqua-cone.  Luthor learns of the disaster, but keeps his mouth shut.  Unaware of her fiancé’s plight, Lara believes he has abandoned her, and assents to Luthor’s proposal of marriage.

Jor-El manages to escape his watery trap, but arrives back in Kryptonopolis too late to interrupt the wedding.  However, just before the “I do’s”, a stroke of fate reveals Luthor the Noble to be Luthor the Fink.  The people of Krypton aren’t the least bit happy about being duped, and the villain has to flee in his time-space ship before he can be sent to the Phantom Zone.

Of course, another reason why Luthor met with so little resistance in wooing Lara may have been because Jor-El was distracted by some ardent attention being thrown his way---by Lois Lane!

As shown in “Lois Lane’s Romance with Jor-El”, from Lois Lane # 59 (Aug., 1965), Lois, using a time-bubble invented by Professor Potter, went back to Krypton with the usual noble intention, taking with her a scientist’s plans for a device that neutralises nuclear reactions.  She arrives on Krypton to meet the pre-married Jor-El and Lara, then discovers that the time-bubble, a product of the usual Potter engineering, has broken down.  Trapped on Krypton, Lois plots to change history in two ways---by thwarting the planet’s destruction and by stealing Jor-El away from Lara.

Plan B doesn’t work out quite the way Lois expects.  She digs deep into her bag of coquettish tricks, but to Jor-El, they make her seem impulsive and conniving.  He far prefers Lara’s unspectacular but sincere loyalty and support.  After Jor-El gives Lois the “let’s just be friends” speech, a jealous Lara shows her claws and the hussy from Earth wisely retreats.

Even worse for Lois, Plan A fails, too.  From the plans Lois provided, Jor-El builds the anti-nuclear device, using some irreplaceable rare materials.    However, the site selected for the construction was Kandor, and you guessed it!  Lois can only watch helplessly as the city is miniaturised and stolen by Brainiac.

Realising that she is now doomed as well, Lois is desperate enough to give Potter’s time-bubble one more shot.  This time, it works!  Here, the story takes its wildest turn.  As she travels forward in time, Lois pauses long enough to peek in on the married Jor-El and Lara and their baby Kal-El.  Unfortunately, it is precisely this moment that Jor-El decides to test his Phantom Zone projector, unknowingly bathing Lois in its beam.

Lois spends the next thirty years in the Phantom Zone!  Superman discovers her there during one of his routine checks on the Zone prisoners.

Then he makes the mistake of letting her out.

And that brings us back to my quick quiz.  How did you do?

If you said “F”---Batman---you got it right.  The Masked Manhunter never journeyed to Krypton, at least, not during the Silver Age.

If you think you remembered that he had, it might be you are recalling his and Robin’s adventure in Kandor with Nightwing and Flamebird, from World’s Finest Comics # 143 (Aug., 1964), or the time when circumstances combined to make Batman believe he was born on Krypton, in World’s Finest Comics # 146 (Dec., 1964). 

The Caped Crusader didn’t make it to old Krypton until World’s Finest Comics # 191 (Feb., 1970), in the story “Execution on Krypton”, when he and Superman travel back to investigate a mystery on the thieves’ island of Bokos.  The story was edited by Mort Weisinger, but since it was published after 1968, the Batman misses the cut on a technicality.

In fact, all of these stories were edited by Weisinger.  Mort certainly believed in mining Superman’s heritage for all it was worth, but sometimes he overdid a plot premise.  By the end of the Silver Age, fully a half-dozen time-travellers from Earth wound up at Jor-El’s front door, some of them more than once.  Sooner or later, these tales would have to step all over themselves.

Maybe Weisinger found Ned Snidely’s question about the abundance of Krypton survivors easy to explain away, but a whole lot tougher had to be the “Dear Editor” letters about the visitors to Krypton:  Why didn’t Jor-El and Lara recognise Superman since he had met them on his last trip to Krypton?  Or Jimmy Olsen?  How could Jimmy be at two places at the same time just before Krypton exploded?  If Superman, Jimmy, Lex Luthor, and Lois Lane were all present when Kandor was kidnapped, why didn’t they run into each other?  Why didn’t Mon-El meet Lois Lane in the Phantom Zone, or let Superman know she was there?  What about . . . ?

Maybe that’s the real reason Mort retired.

There’s nothing quite like a comic book legacy. I enjoy watching the passing of the mantle from one character to another. I admire the interaction between different generations and appreciate the contrast in characters. I know I’m not the only one. Comic book writers often invent legacies for characters that didn’t previously have them. They introduce predecessors, distant ancestors and futuristic descendants. Comic book legacies create a sense of history, of epic scale, of continuity. Here is my list of the best legacy characters in comic books. Your list is probably different. Heck, my list would probably be different if I wrote this article again in a couple of months. But read along anyway and enjoy these reflections about the greatest comic book legacies.

15. Jaguar: The first Jaguar showed up in the Silver Age from Archie Comics. He wore a red suit with Jaguar stripes and his adventures mirrored the Superman stories at the time. In the early ‘90s, DC leased the Archie heroes and introduced a new teenaged, female, Hispanic Jaguar. The diversity replacement doesn’t always catch on with fans but in this case, the new Jaguar was more memorable than her predecessor. The newest Jaguar debuted this year from Archie’s Red Circle comics. Although she has a different name- Ivy Velez- she’s clearly modeled on the DC reincarnation.

14. Atom: The Golden Age Atom is not a great character (despite the fact that we share an alma mater in Calvin College). He’s a short guy with a chip on his shoulder. But the name was too good not to be used again. Ray Palmer became the second Atom, complete with shrinking powers and a cool new Gil Kane costume. In recent years, Chinese immigrant Ryan Choi has worn the mantle. Before that, Adam Cray went by Atom while a member of the Suicide Squad. With four successors, including Atom Smasher, Atom is one of the longest legacies in comics.

13. Wonder Girl: It’s not often that a spin-off character has their own legacy but Wonder Girl is the wonderful exception. Originally, Wonder Girl was a teenaged Wonder Woman. However, once the character joined the Teen Titans, she needed an identity of her own and Wonder Woman’s little sister Donna was introduced. Her origin was rewritten over the years, sometimes de-emphasizing the family connection and sometimes re-establishing it. In the 1990s, a new Wonder Girl, Cassie Sandsmark, took on the name. She was one of the stalwarts in Young Justice and eventually the Titans. The two Wonder Girls have often fought side by side, though the older Donna now goes by the name Troia.

12. Black Widow: Stan Lee often re-used Golden Age names with tenuous or even non-existent connections to the original character: Angel, Daredevil, Vision, and so on. The original Black Widow was a mystical avatar of revenge, the new Black Widow a Russian super-spy. But at the turn of the century, Devin Grayson and Greg Rucka introduced a true legacy for the Black Widow. Natasha Romanoff’s former bosses in the spy world reclaimed the moniker and gave it to a new agent, Yelena Belova. The clashes between the two spies served as the impetus for several excellent mini-series and made Black Widow one of the few, great female legacies.

11. Phoenix/Marvel Girl: The other day, I was explaining the concept of legacy characters to my daughter (she was reading Iron Fist over my shoulder and wanted to know why there was more than one). She immediately assumed that legacy characters were related to one another. That’s not always the case. But sometimes its true that mantles are passed from one generation to the next. In this case, Jean Grey’s daughter from a future timeline took her mother’s name, powers and place on the X-Men. Rachel Grey was the second Phoenix and one of my favorite heroines. Later one, she called herself Marvel Girl as a further tribute to her mom.

10. Human Torch: The Human Torch is one of the most successful legacy characters in comics. The original Human Torch was a Golden Age android who went by the name of Jim Hammond. When Jack Kirby and Stan Lee reintroduced the character in the Silver Age, they gave the powers to a human teenager named Johnny Storm. Johnny quickly surpassed the original as a member of the Fantastic Four and occasional solo star. Later writers like John Byrne explored the connection between the two characters, building on the golden legacy of the Human Torch.

9. Grendel: Legacies are usually reserved for Marvel and DC, companies that have been around for 70 years or so. Plus, they tend to be passed down from hero to hero, not villain to villain. But every once in a while, an excellent legacy is crafted for a new character. Matt Wagner created the villain Grendel for Comico. However, he promptly killed the original Grendel, Hunter Rose, and passed the legacy on to Hunter’s granddaughter Christine Spar. The new Grendel was more of an anti-hero than a villain. She was also the beginning of a long line of Grendels over the years, each one straddling the line between good and evil in a different way.

8. Hourman: Hourman is a pretty typical legacy character but, in this case, that’s a good thing as it’s a name that easily comes to mind when thinking about comic book legacies. The first Hourman, Rex Tyler, was a second-tier star in the Golden Age. His son, Rick Tyler, took the name (and wore one of the worst costumes in history) in Infinity Inc. The name passed to a futuristic android at the hands of Grant Morrison and Tom Peyer. Then, it finally returned to Rick Tyler (in a much better costume) as he joined Geoff Johns’ new JSA.

7. Captain Marvel (Marvel): Captain Marvel is one of the most used names in comic books, however most of those occurred at different companies and have no direct relation to one another. The exception is Marvel’s long line of Captains. The first was the Kree warrior, Mar-Vell, who turned against his own race to defend his adopted home of Earth. The second was New Orleans native Monica Rambeau who could transform her body into light. Mar-Vell’s children Genis and Phyla took their turns with the mantle. The newest Captain Marvel is Carol Danvers, the former air force officer and Ms. Marvel. With so many different characters claiming the name over the years, Captain Marvel is one of the most diverse legacies in comics.

6. Blue Beetle: There are three Blue Beetles. Each one debuted at a different company, yet they remain connected. The first Blue Beetle, Dan Garrett, was a standard Golden Age superhero with a mystical artifact. The second Blue Beetle, Ted Kord, was his Silver Age replacement, turning to gizmos and gadgets instead of magic. The third Blue Beetle, Jaime Reyes, is the current bearer of the title. He wears an alien super-suit that speaks in a language only he can understand. Each Blue Beetle has a distinctive look and role, making the Blue Beetle one of the more interesting legacies in comics.

5. Captain America: Marvel hasn’t had as much success introducing legacy characters as DC. However, there is one huge exception: Captain America. Although most fans agree that Steve Rogers is the only, true Captain America, other characters have worn the mantle with distinction and become noteworthy heroes in their own right. John Walker became the US Agent after a stint as Captain America. Isaiah Bradley was introduced as an earlier Captain America who received the super-soldier serum as a test subject. And James Barnes starred in a very popular series as Captain America before reverting to the name Winter Soldier. Marvel has also retroactively introduced other Captains as a way to explain appearances in the late ‘40s and mid ‘50s when Steve Rogers was supposedly frozen in ice. That’s a lot of Captain Americas- and an incredible legacy to live up to.

4. Green Lantern: I doubt that any name has been passed around in comics more than Green Lantern. Alan Scott. Hal Jordan. Guy Gardner. John Stewart. Kyle Rayner. Jennie-Lynn Hayden. And that’s just from Earth! Numerous heroes and heroines have worn the ring and the lantern insignia with distinction as part of the intergalactic police force, the Green Lantern Corps. There’s a Green Lantern for every generation and every personality.

3. Robin: It’s amazing to think about all of the characters who have worn Robin’s cape and tights over the years, especially considering that the original Robin held on to the name for almost 50 years. Dick Grayson was the original Robin, but he now goes by Nightwing. Jason Todd took his turn, though he’s now the Red Hood. Tim Drake claimed the mantle. Stephanie Brown, aka Spoiler, wore it for a brief time. Carrie Kelley was the Robin in the future setting of The Dark Knight Returns. And Bruce Wayne’s son Damian is the current namesake. Robin got a late start as a legacy, but it has quickly grown into one of the greatest.

2. Starman: Starman is the definitive legacy character. It’s a classic name yet, for a long time, it wasn’t attached to a great character. Ted Knight was a solid second-tier superhero in the Golden Age but in the ‘70s and ‘80s the name was passed on to several characters who had no relation or connection to the original. Then, in 1994, James Robinson introduced a new Starman: Jack Knight, the rebellious son of the first Starman. In a modern classic, Robinson tied all of the various Starmen together in an intricate tapestry that spanned space and time. Robinson showed the depths that could be explored in a great legacy character, blazing a trail for many others.

1. Flash: The Flash is the first and greatest legacy character. Jay Garrick was the original Flash, a Golden Age speedster who wore a Hermes inspired helmet. In 1956, editor Julius Schwartz commissioned a new Flash. The character was completely transformed. Barry Allen worked in a police crime lab, gained powers through a scientific accident, and wore a sleek red costume with yellow lightning highlights. The character quickly caught on and is credited with launching the Silver Age. Barry and Jay then met each other in the classic story, Flash of Two Worlds, which introduced the idea of the multiverse. Yet the legacy of the Flash didn’t stop there. Barry’s nephew, Wally West, took over the costume in 1986. Wally proved to be a popular replacement as Mark Waid expanded on the character’s powers with the addition of the Speed Force and the character’s legacy with the introduction of Max Mercury and Impulse (who would go on to become the fourth Flash).

OK, it's not really a re-launch. I just said that to get you to read this. Did it work?

Anyway, a few months back I asked for suggestions for how to improve the site. A great many excellent suggestions were made, especially by Lumbering Jack, but only one really requires a lot of prep time. And that is: DEATH TO ALL GROUPS!

Well, not all of them. But the consensus was that Groups were superfluous, and split conversations into more than one place, and were confusing for newbies, and caused genital warts.

Now, not all Groups were unnecessary. Here are the ones I intend to keep:

WILD CARDS: This singular interest with almost zero overlap with comics really needs a "room" where Wild Carders can gather and do their thing. This is the one place I think Groups functions the way it's supposed to.

COMICS NEWS: Because otherwise all the press releases that I ... um, I mean, Newsboy posts would sorta overwhelm the front page teases.

THE TIMELINE GROUP: This Group was created by the Baron as a home for all of his Earth-44 stuff, which is so huge I would not dream of asking him to move it all. If I can, I'll rename it "Earth-44 Timeline Group" (but I'm not sure I can).

MODERATORS: Don't look over here. There's nothing over here. This is not the Group you're looking for. (Seriously, this is a private "room" for the Mods to discuss problems freely without worrying about hurt feelings. We need the room, because e-mail has proved too clumsy.)

And I propose to add a Group at some point, that will be ARCHIVES or FAQ or somesuch as a place where we can park things we will reference in future: Board rules, columns with lots of good information, FAQs, Moderator contacts, boilerplate legalese, stuff like that. If anyone can suggest a name to cover all that, I'm all ears!

Anyway, I intend to delete all the rest. Which means:

1) If there's a group you think has a compelling reason to exist that you want to convince me to keep, you'd better get to convincing, and

2) If there's a thread or a post in any group that you want to save, get to saving it. Cut and paste to another thread somewhere, or start a thread and paste it, or whatever. Because when I delete a given Group, I doubt I can resurrect anything.

And when will I delete this Groups? You fools! Why would I explain my master plan and give you time to stop it? I did it 20 minutes ago! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Just kidding -- I couldn't resist the Watchmen reference. Anyway, I thought a month would be enough time, so how about Aug. 1 for The Big Delete?

As ever, spout off, Legionnaires. This is your site, and I'm doing this to make it better. If I'm NOT gonna make it better, then let me know!

I have a small Fluit Notes tradition: during vacation, I like to take a corresponding break from comic book articles and write about genre TV shows instead. In the past, I’ve written “Best of” lists for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Farscape, Babylon 5 and Lost. This year, I take a look back at five seasons of Chuck, the spy comedy that recently came to an end.

Season One

Chuck vs. the Intersect (1): Wikipedia describes Chuck as an action-comedy-spy-drama. That was both the attraction and the problem. For viewers like me, it was an interesting genre mash-up: a combination of workplace comedies like The Office, spy adventures like Alias and quirky romances like Moonlighting. Chuck could be hilarious one moment and exciting the next. Yet some viewers and critics were confused by a show that defied categorization. USA Today consistently called for the show to dump the BuyMore. I think they were way off base. The workplace hi-jinx grounded Chuck in an ordinary world that the rest of us could relate to while also providing some of the show’s most memorable moments. Plus, the on-again/off-again relationship grew into the real heart of the series, providing an emotional core that sustained it for five seasons.

Chuck vs. the Tango (3): This episode is notable mostly for being the first to run separate stories for the BuyMore employees and the spies. However, that’s more of a historical footnote. The reason why I enjoyed this episode- and remember it so fondly- is that it expanded Chuck’s role in the spy world. It showed that spying would be about more than accessing the Intersect or the occasional fistfight. Chuck had to infiltrate a fancy auction, pretend to be the debonair Charles Carmichael for the first time and, yes, dance the tango.

Chuck vs. the Wookie (4): Chuck was a show about friendship as much as it was about romance. This episode showcased the friendship between Chuck and Morgan, while contrasting it with the working rivalry between Sarah and guest-star Carina. Carina’s flirtation with Morgan was the highlight of the episode and it led to some remarkable recollections in later seasons.

Chuck vs. the Truth and Chuck vs. the Imported Hard Salami (8 & 9): One of the ways the creators of Chuck amped up the romantic tension was by occasionally introducing other love interests. Chuck has such low self-esteem at the beginning of the series that he finds it hard to believe anyone would be interested in him romantically. The result is that he misses early signals and that he’s easily distracted from Sarah when he finally notices them. This two-part story featured Rachel Bilson as a deli chef who names a sandwich after Chuck.

Chuck vs. the Nemesis (10): Matt Bomer returns as Bryce in this critical episode. As Chuck’s old college roommate and Sarah’s former spy partner, Bryce is the connecting link between the two of them. He’s also the perfect spy- suave, confident and competent- everything that Chuck is not. As a result, Sarah is attracted to him and Chuck feels inadequate because of him. Every time Bryce returns to the series, Chuck is forced to step up his game becoming more of a spy and more of a man.

Season Two

Chuck vs. the Seduction (2): In season two, the CIA has decided to use Chuck as a full-fledged agent and not just an asset. Throughout the season, Chuck is trained in new skills and dropped into new situations. In this episode, he is taught the art of seduction by master spy Roan Montgomery, who is played by John Larroquette. The training forces Chuck to confront his emerging romantic feelings for Sarah, even though they aren’t yet comfortable as a couple.

Chuck vs. Tom Sawyer (5): Chuck is at its best when the spy stories and the store stories intersect. In this episode, we learn that BuyMore co-worker Jeff Barnes is a former Missile Command champion from 1983. To everyone’s surprise, this has made him the target of a global terrorist and Chuck has to protect his friend without revealing his CIA connection. Eventually, we discover that Missile Command contains the codes to actually control a missile platform and that Chuck has to beat Jeff’s old world record in order to prevent global catastrophe.

Chuck vs. the Gravitron (8): At this point, I realized that I could have picked almost every episode from season two. This was easily the most consistently entertaining year for Chuck. I particularly enjoyed the Jill trilogy in which Jordana Brewster played Chuck’s ex-girlfriend. The storyline combined great character moments and wonderful plot twists. The final episode in the arc, Chuck vs. the Gravitron, contains a very memorable scene of Chuck and Jill on the Ferris wheel. There’s a lot of tension as the audience knows things that the characters don’t and there’s plenty of heartache for the same reason.

Chuck vs. the Delorean (10): One of the best things about Chuck was that it was fun. That seems to be out of fashion these days, when dark shows like Mad Men and Breaking Bad get all of the acclaim, but that humorous side helped Chuck craft its own identity. In this episode, we learn about Sarah’s mysterious past when her dad, a con artist played by Gary Cole, arrives and embroils the team in a con against a sheikh with possible terrorist ties. The con and the upside-down relationships resulted in a trunk full of funny moments and lines.

Chuck vs. Santa Claus (11): The character Chuck is a geek everyman for geeks everywhere. The show Chuck played up those connections by offering numerous tributes to fan favorite shows and movies of the past. This Christmas episode included a hilarious send-up of the original Die Hard movie. Yet, more than that, this episode showed how the series was able to use humor and tension as dramatic counterpoints. At the end of the episode, Chuck watches Sarah kill a terrorist- a shocking moment that shatters his impression of her.

Chuck vs. the Suburbs (13): The writers on Chuck had a lot of fun playing with the “will they or won’t they” angle of Chuck and Sarah’s relationship. In this episode, Chuck and Sarah go undercover as Suburban newlyweds. The scenario offers a possible preview of their future to come. It exposes Chuck’s interest in Sarah and reveals Sarah’s reluctance to be committed to any relationships. It also results in a major moment for the show as this particular suburb is a front for the terrorist organization Fulcrum, once again combining romantic comedy with serious spy tension.

Chuck vs. the Dream Job (19): Chuck was building a reputation for great guest stars but they outdid themselves in this episode with two classic actors in two memorable roles. Scott Bakula appears for the first time as Chuck and Ellie’s long-lost father. And Chevy Chase appears as a computer executive who wants to woo Chuck away from the CIA. This episode contains surprising revelations and difficult decisions, making it an engrossing example of Chuck at its best.

Chuck vs. the Colonel and Chuck vs. the Ring (21 & 22): The final episodes of season two were a heart-racing affair. Chuck and Sarah are finally ready to declare their love for each other and run away from the CIA. But they’ve picked the worst possible time. The CIA is looking for them. They’re looking for Chuck’s dad. And Ellie is planning her wedding to Awesome. The contrast between Chuck’s spy life and family life has never been stronger. Plus, Morgan begins to step to the fore. He’s slowly been growing from comic relief into an important character and in this episode, he surprisingly saves Ellie’s wedding from disaster. We’re also treated to the much-anticipated return of Jeffster!- Jeff and Lester’s awful band that first appeared in Chuck vs. the Best Friend.

That should do it for part one. Come on back for part two and the best of seasons three through five.

By Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

'First Avenger' lifts the best of comics' Captain America

Captain America: The First Avenger, premiering July 22, looks to be the best comics-to-film movie of the summer – which is saying a lot – but is also loaded with fun facts:

* This movie is the fifth appearance of the Living Legend of WWII on film, but the only one to be remotely accurate . . . or even good.

A 1944 Captain America serial was unlike the comic books of the time, as it depicted Cap with a red star(!) on his chest, no shield, no sidekick and he was, of all things, a stateside district attorney (instead of a U.S. Army private).  

Captain America and Captain America II: Death Too Soon aired on CBS in 1979, both starring Reb Brown and jettisoning the World War II connection completely. They were awful.

A 1990 Captain America starred Matt Salinger and, of all things, an Italian Red Skull. (He’s a Nazi. His name is Johann Schmidt. He was Hitler’s right-hand man. He’s German!) It was so bad it went straight to VHS.  

* Some recent Marvel movies have had oblique references to First Avenger. Partially-constructed shields appear in both Iron Man movies. The Incredible Hulk mentions the wartime Super-Soldier Formula, which is what creates the Star-Spangled Avenger.

* This movie returns the favor. The subtitle The First Avenger is a hint to where all these movies are heading: The Avengers in 2012. Also, Howard Stark – Tony Stark’s father, who was significant in Iron Man II – is part of the Super-Soldier science team in First Avenger.

* Incidentally, The First Avenger subtitle was added to become the whole title when the movie was distributed in areas where America isn’t particularly popular. But it turns out that even countries like France wanted the full title, because Captain America is such a well-known brand. Now the Captain America part will be dropped from the title in only three countries: Russia, Ukraine and, oddly, South Korea.

* In the comics, sidekick James “Bucky” Barnes was a teenager in the war (albeit a lethal, highly trained one). In the movie he appears to be old enough to volunteer for service. To my mind that’s an improvement, since the “child endangerment” aspect of Robin-like sidekicks always bugged me.

* Beginning in 1963, Marvel’s Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos told the tales of a fictional U.S. Ranger group in World War II. To explain how Nick Fury could remain active into the 21st century, Marvel has explained that his aging has been scientifically retarded. However, the movie version of Fury, played by Sam Jackson, will sidestep the aging question entirely by Fury not appearing in World War II in First Avenger, although the Howling Commandos will.

Speaking of the Howlers, it appears Captain America and Bucky will lead them. Of the comic-book squad, only two appear in the movie: Cpl. Timothy Aloysius “Dum Dum” Dugan, a huge Irishman, and Gabe Jones, an African-American trumpet player. The team is fleshed out by a Japanese-American, Jim Morita; an Englishman, Montgomery Falsworth; and a Frenchman, Jacques Dernier. All three have their roots in the comics as well.

Stan Lee created Morita and his Nisei (American-born Japanese) squad in a 1967 Sgt. Fury to recognize the efforts of patriotic Japanese-Americans in WWII. Falsworth was the wartime Union Jack, England’s answer to Captain America, created in a 1976 Invaders, another title set during the war. Dernier first appeared in a 1965 Sgt. Fury as the French Resistance liaison for the Howlers.

* Cap’s wartime sweetheart was French Resistance fighter Peggy Carter, who will be played by Hayley Atwell as a conflation of various female characters. Their bittersweet romance probably won’t leave a dry eye in the house.

* One surprise is Arnim Zola, a Skull henchman and Nazi scientist who eventually transfers his consciousness to a robot. Another is the appearance of a Cosmic Cube (hinted at in Thor), a weapon that didn’t exist in the comics until 1967. I suspect it will play a role in Avengers, too.

* Hydra, a nation-less terrorist organization, predated al-Qaida by decades with its first comic-book appearance in 1965. In the comics, Hydra was founded by surviving Axis players near the end of World War II, which makes their appearance in the movie in conjunction with the Red Skull entirely consistent. Their creed is eerily modern: “Hail Hydra! Immortal Hydra! We shall never be destroyed! Cut off a limb, and two more shall take its place!”

Art above:

1. Chris Evans plays Captain America in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, from Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment. He is seen here in full combat regalia. Photo credit: Courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios © 2011 MVLFFLLC. ™ & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

2. Dominic Cooper plays Howard Stark in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, from Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment. In both the comics and the movies, Howard Stark is based loosley on Howard Hughes and Walt Disney. Photo credit: Jay Maidment / Marvel Studios © 2011 MVLFFLLC. ™ & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

3. Chris Evans plays Steve Rogers (center) with the Howling Commandos, who are somewhat different from the comics version of the First Ranger Attack Squad. Bruno Ricci plays Jacques Dernier (third left from center), Kenneth Choi plays Jim Morita (second left from center), Neal McDonough plays Dum Dum Dugan (first right from center), Sebastian Stan plays James "Bucky" Barnes (second right from center), JJ Feild plays Montgomery Falsworth (third right from center), and Derek Luke plays Gabe Jones (fifth right from center) - in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, from Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment. Photo credit: Jay Maidment / Marvel Studios © 2011 MVLFFLLC. ™ & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

4. Hayley Atwell plays Peggy Carter, center, in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, from Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment. Peggy is a U.S. Army officer present at Captain America's birth and is, as they said in the 1940s, both a tomato and a tough broad. Photo credit: Jay Maidment / Marvel Studios © 2011 MVLFFLLC. ™ & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

Hugo Weaving plays Red Skull in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, from Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment. Photo credit: Courtesy of Paramount Pictures and Marvel Studios © 2011 MVLFFLLC. ™ & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

Stanley Tucci plays Dr. Abraham Erskine in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, from Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment. In the comics, Erskine is a Jewish scientist smuggled out of Germany during the pogroms, and is based loosely on Albert Einstein. In fact, in the comics, his security codename is "Reinstein." Photo credit: Jay Maidment / Marvel Studios © 2011 MVLFFLLC. ™ & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

At left, Chris Evans plays Steve Rogers in CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER, from Paramount Pictures and Marvel Entertainment. In this scene, Evans poses in a position lifted straight from the comics. Photo credit: Jay Maidment / Marvel Studios © 2011 MVLFFLLC. ™ & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved. At right, Steve Rogers staring in disbelief at his new body is a familiar scene in such comics as "Tales of Suspense" #63. Courtesy Marvel Comics

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com.

The “spin-off” is a peculiar feature of fiction.  It isn’t birthed from creative inspiration, except indirectly.  The spin-off is designed to commercially exploit a supporting character who turns out to be more popular than expected.  The reasoning goes, if “X” character is so popular, then if we give him his own venue, his fans will follow.

Thus, The Andy Griffith Show led to Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., and All in the Family begat Maude and The Jeffersons.  And Gloria.  Well, they can’t all be winners---and many times, the spun-off property is not.  In fact, the deck is stacked against a successful spin-off.  Often, the spun-off character only clicks when he plays off the main character in the parent work and he isn’t strong enough to carry the load himself. 

Sometimes, in order to fit the spin-off character into a lead rôle, the writers tinker too much with the basic concept of the character and erase the very qualities which made him appealing to the audience.  Another trap is throwing the spun-off lead into a format completely at odds with his established persona, resulting in a premise too absurd for the audience to accept.

Keep those in mind, folks.  We’ll be coming back to them further down the page.

Spin-off aren’t unique to television.  You’ll find the practice employed in other media.  Comic strips, for one.  Wash Tubbs met two-fisted adventurer Captain Easy in a foreign prison in 1929, and by 1933, Easy had his own strip---Captain Easy, Soldier of Fortune.  (Eventually, creator Roy Crane finally gave up trying to keep Tubbs from being eclipsed by Easy in the parent strip, Wash Tubbs, and just combined to the two series.)  Another case in point:  over in Buz Sawyer, Sawyer’s comedy-relief sidekick, Roscoe Sweeney, soon received with his own strip.

And then there’s comic books.  No flies on those editors, either.   In the 1950’s, the suits at National Periodical (DC) capitalised on the popularity of its cash cow, Superman, after he was raised to new heights by the television series starring George Reeves.   Thus, two of the Man of Steel’s supporting characters were spun-off into their own titles---Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen and Superman’s Girl Friend, Lois Lane.  And in 1964, after four years of loyal service as a recurring character in The Flash, the Elongated Man was rewarded with his own back-up series in Detective Comics.

On the Marvel Comics side of the street, Stan Lee created The Fantastic Four in 1961.  Within a year, he gave the FF’s junior member, the Human Torch, his shot at individual stardom---by giving him his own series in Strange Tales.

DC tended to analyse sales figures and do market research before launching a character in his own title.  For decades, DC had been the heavyweight of the comics-publishing industry.  With a solid customer base, it could afford the luxury of such things as Showcase, a title devoted to testing characters, to see if they were popular enough to carry their own series.

Marvel Comics, on the other hand, didn’t have time to waste; Stan Lee was out to grab every reader he could, as fast as he could.  So, if a series proved successful, he would make an intuitive leap, finger one of the series’ supporting cast as a draw, and promote him.  And sometimes, Stan’s intuition could be off, which is why the Human Torch’s series in Strange Tales sputtered and died, even after the Thing was thrown in to try and bolster sales.

And all that build-up brings us to the real topic of this entry of my Deck Log. 

The Marvel war comic Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos was the result of a wager between Stan Lee and Marvel publisher Martin Goodman.  Lee bet that he could take the worst title imaginable and with his writing and Jack Kirby’s art, it would sell.

Stan won the bet.

Billed as “the war mag for people who hate war mags”, Sgt. Fury was the most successful of Marvel’s non-super-hero output.  Goodman and Lee kept that in mind when, in the late 1960’s, Marvel finally negotiated its way out of its contract with DC-controlled distributor, Independent News---which limited Marvel to eight monthly titles---and was able to sign on with Curtis Distribution.

With the restriction lifted, 1968 saw a wave of new Marvel titles hit the stands.  Many of them were simply the result of cleaving old titles such as Strange Tales, Tales to Astonish, and Tales of Suspense in two.  But in one case, a new title was born as a spin-off of the popular Sgt. Fury series:  Captain Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders.

The character of “the Skipper” had been a minor player in the Sergeant Fury universe.  The salty, bearded commander of the submarine USS Sea Wolf debuted in Sgt. Fury # 10 (Sep., 1964).  He would return five more times, whenever Fury and his Howlers would need transportation to or from some overseas destination.  It was this character that Stan Lee saw fit to spring off into his own title.

There had to be some changes, though.  First, the Skipper was finally given a true name---Simon Savage---and promoted a step up in paygrade, to the rank of captain.  And since his title was to be a virtual redux of Fury’s, Savage was taken out of his submarine and put in charge of a team of Marines operating in the South Pacific.  Also tossed into the mix was Seaman “Blarney” Stone, a crewman occasionally seen on Sea Wolf.  Given the distance between a very junior enlisted man and a senior officer of the line, Stone seemed to be unusually familiar with Savage on a personal basis.  That was never explained, and it was one of the many things, as it turned out, badly needed to be.

Besides the two Navy men, Savage and Stone, the rest of the Leatherneck Raiders were Marines, right out of Hollywood central casting.  There was Sergeant “Yaketty” Yates, the twenty-year lifer.  Then you had Corporal Jacques LaRocque, matinee-idol handsome and an inveterate skirt-chaser.  He was intended to be the Raiders’ version of Dino Manelli.  Rounding out the squad were Private Jay Little Bear, an American Indian complete with mohawk haircut and the bow and arrows he took into battle, and Private Lee Baker, your basic non-descript character, who had been a teacher in civilian life.

Clearly, the Raiders were clones of the Howlers, distinguished by stereotype, even down to the fact that they all wore different headgear.  The “hook” intended to differentiate Savage’s squad from Fury’s Howlers was that the Raiders were disrupted by the intra-service antagonism between the Navy men and the Marines.  Much of the ill will came from hard-bitten Captain Savage and the equally tough-as-nails Sergeant Yates, often leading to disputes in the field, always won, of course, by Savage, by virtue of his superior rank.

Captain Savage and His Leatherneck Raiders # 1 (Jan., 1968) kicked off with a routine Howler-like mission to destroy a Japanese base on Tarawa, intended to introduce the Raiders to the readers.  It ended with the Raiders meeting up with Sergeant Fury and his guys, to provide a sense of familiarity for their debut.

The next three issues, however, pulled out the stops.  This three-parter depicted Savage and his men pitted against the crew of a “phantom submarine” that was sinking both Allied and Japanese ships.  The Big Reveal of the story was that the agency behind the phantom sub-attacks was Hydra, the subversive organisation which gave so much grief to the modern-day Nick Fury in Strange Tales.  This was not the only tie to Fury to come out of this saga.  Here, the readers learnt the origin of Hydra (the first version of its origin, anyway) and who should turn out to be the Supreme Hydra?  None other than old Fury foe, Baron Strucker.

It was as if Stan Lee and writer Gary Friedrich had no faith that the Raiders could stand on their own as characters, so they included as many references to Sgt. Fury as possible.  For the Hydra story, Friedrich even tossed in a concurrent plot of a Japanese squad also sent to track down and destroy the phantom submarine.  The Japanese team was composed of analogues to the individual Raiders.  More accurately, it was a copy of a copy.  The idea of a counterpart force on the enemy side had already been done in Sgt. Fury, with the Blitzkrig Squad, the German version of the Howling Commandos---which had been initially commanded by Baron Strucker.

Nevertheless, this was the high point for the series.  Despite its derivative nature, the story succeeded on two fronts---in depicting the origin of Hydra in great detail (furthering the continuity of the Marvel universe) and in the plot twist which forced the Raiders and their Japanese counterparts to work together.  The enemies-united-against-a-common-foe trope is an old fictional device, but the story pulled it off admirably.

The problem was, after hitting its peak so early, there was no place for the series to go but down.  The next few Raiders stories were routine stuff that the Howlers did every month, and Friedrich still didn’t trust his new series enough to stop including ties to the title that birthed it.  Issue # 5 (Aug., 1968) included occasional Sgt. Fury supporting character Rolfe Harrison, of the Australian Army.  And in # 6 (Sep., 1968), Friedrich concluded a months-long Sgt. Fury sub-plot in which Howler Izzy Cohen had been held captive in a Japanese prison all that time.  The Raiders rescued Izzy, leading to a lot of “our group is better than your group” sarcasm between the Howler and Savage’s men.

In the following issue, Friedrich dispensed with the Fury references, but included an even more prominent link to the Marvel mainstream---Marine Corps aviator Lieutenant Ben Grimm.  Yes, that Ben Grimm, who had been established in Fantastic Four as having served in the Big One.  Savage and his men are assigned to rescue him from a Japanese camp.  (Rescuing P.O.W.’s was something which the Raiders did a lot over the brief course of their series.) 

Issue # 8 (Nov., 1968) almost gets by with no Fury ties, until the last page, when it mentions that the events of that issue was preparatory training for an upcoming mission where the Raiders will work alongside the Howling Commandos.

Even to continuity mavens, the constant references to Sergeant Fury grew wearisome.  It felt like Marvel was pushing too hard to convince the fans that Captain Savage was just like Sgt. Fury.  When that was the last thing it needed to be.

Lee and Friedrich started tinkering with the basics.  In issue # 9 (Dec., 1968), for reasons forced by an implausible plot permutation, Simon Savage shaves off his beard.  The idea behind this was to make Savage appear more youthful, on the notion that teen-age readers would more identify with a hero who didn’t look so mature.  Here, Lee underestimated the readership.  Savage’s beard was one of the few things which made him distinctive as a war-comic hero, and fans wrote in, demanding that he get it back.  (Eventually, he would.)

Also with this issue, the title would change to Captain Savage and His Battlefield Raiders, for reasons never elaborated upon.

Issue # 11 (Feb., 1969) brought the long-awaited joint Howler-Raider mission, which would conclude the following month, in Sgt. Fury # 64.  Most notable, though, was that this first half featured the death of a Raider.  Obviously, Friedrich was hoping for the same kind of emotional resonance that resulted when Howler Junior Juniper was killed.  In fact, the script even has Fury's men comparing it to Junior’s death.  However, given the fact that the doomed Raider had been the one given the least development over the course of the series, his death didn’t have the impact hoped for.  (Let’s see . . . the antagonistic sergeant, a romance-driven Frenchman, a doughty Irishman, a noble Indian warrior, and a generic white guy with no distinctive personality . . . gee, I wonder who gets it?)

The title was bombing, and Stan, probably embarrassed that he couldn’t duplicate his earlier feat of making Sgt. Fury a success, tried to save it. 

In issue 13 (Apr., 1969), Arnold Drake replaced Gary Friedrich as writer.  That brought a marked improvement in the scripts.  Primarily due to Drake’s strength with dialogue, the characterisation improved.  There was no more “Navy versus Marine” nonsense, and the Raiders’ interaction seemed more natural and believable. 

On the down side, Drake’s stories seemed to completely ignore the fact that there had ever been any Captain Savage stories before he took over.  He stepped all over continuity, especially in issue # 14 (May, 1969).  Supposedly presenting Savage’s first mission with the Raiders, this story was rife with continuity errors.  It was set in 1942, when the earlier Sgt. Fury tales had established that Savage was still a sub skipper ferrying the Howlers around at that time.  It showed Savage as clean-shaven, when he should have had his full beard, and it didn’t include the Raider who was killed back in issue # 11.  You better believe Captain Savage fans---the ones that were left---let Marvel hear about this.

It was enough, I guess; after only two more issues, Drake was gone and Gary Friedrich was back as writer.  A couple of stories later---# 18 (Jan., 1970)---Friedrich laid the seeds for what was going to be a sea change for the series.  While on yet another mission to rescue a big wig from a Japanese prison, we discover something about Captain Savage that made him stand out from most comic-book World War II heroes---he’s married and has two children.  Unfortunately, the reason we learn this is because he has received a letter from the missus, informing him that she is seeking a divorce.  She can no longer stand the waiting for him, not knowing if he’s alive or dead.

It was an attempt to revive interest in the series by saddling the hero with some classic Marvel-style emotional conflict.  But it unwittingly created an unpleasant situation that even fans who generally didn't care about continuity couldn't ignore.  You see, during Friedrich’s first run on the title, Savage had been shown heartily enjoying female companionship during his off-duty time, including one particularly amorous interlude with a Navy nurse named Michelle. 

To establish now that Savage was married turned him into an adulterer.  Never mind that such things occurred regularly with real G.I.’s during World War II; cheating on one’s wife was too unsavory for a Silver-Age comic-book hero.  Fortunately for Marvel, the Comics Code Authority missed it.  Friedrich probably hoped the readers would, too.

The next issue shows most of the Raiders celebrating New Year’s Eve, as Captain Savage receives a letter from home informing him that the divorce is final.  While Yates, Stone, and the rest guzzle suds and sing “Auld Lang Syne” (and that’s the last we see of them in the story), Savage persuades the brass to give him temporary command of his old sub, Sea Wolf, for a mission.  What follows is a standard “Silent Service” tale of submarine versus surface ship.  Most of the sub-plots are taken straight from Run Silent, Run Deep, while Savage anguishes over his personal loss.

Can you say “format change”?  I’m sure you can.  Friedrich plainly said so on the last page, when he asked the readers: 

Should the Skipper return to his sea-faring shenanigans . . . or would you rather see him continue as leader of the block-bustin’ Battlefield Rangers?  Let us know as soon as you can though . . . ‘cause if anyone can give Savage a helping hand in this turning point in his career . . . it has to be you!

Apparently, nobody cared enough, one way or the other, because there would be no issue # 20 of Captain Savage.

That wasn’t quite the end of the line for a couple of the characters.  Private Jay Little Bear would be handed off to Marvel’s third try at a successful war mag, Combat Kelly and His Deadly Dozen.  Although it is mentioned, it is never explained why he was no longer with the Raiders.  In any event, Little Bear should have stayed where he was, for he is killed in the last issue of that title.

And we knew that Captain Savage survived World War II because he had made an appearance in the Howling Commandos’ Korean-War mission, in Sgt. Fury Annual # 1 (1965).

‘Way back in the introduction of this piece, I mentioned two missteps which would sink a spin-off attempt:  too much alteration of the spun-off character; and placing the character in such an unlikely premise that it’s difficult for the fan to swallow.  Captain Savage was tainted with both of these sins.

The Leatherneck Raiders were never more than Howler wanna-bes, as much as it pains me to say it, given that their leader was a Navy man. Plausibility was the first casualty. With any WWII comic-book series, one accepts certain things with a bit of salt; in the case of Sgt. Fury, in particular.  But Captain Savage just took too many liberties from military SOP and common sense.

Let’s start with the way the supporting character of the Skipper was pushed and pulled beyond reason, even for comic books.

As presented in Sgt. Fury, he was the commanding officer of a submarine in the European theatre of operations.  Suddenly, he’s detailed to lead a squad of Marines in the Pacific!

Captain Savage had been depicted as an exceptional sub commander; however, the skill sets required to successfully command a sub don't translate to the abilities needed to lead a squad of men in ground warfare.  This is especially true in the case of a Marine squad, where any number of exceptional Marine Corps officers or non-coms would be much better trained and experienced in combat tactics, hand-to-hand combat, marksmanship, and reconnaissance.

It’s even problematic to suggest the excuse that Savage had commando training earlier in his career.  As a submariner, Savage would have spent his career learning seamanship, command at sea, and, particularly, the intricacies of commanding a submarine (not something one masters in a day or two of study).  That means coming up the ranks as a division officer, a department head, an executive officer, and then, finally command of his own.  It’s an intensive career path and it commences as soon as the sub-bound officer receives his commission as an ensign.  There is no gap to realistically insert commando training for Savage.

Even the series itself admitted this implausibility.  In Captain Savage # 1, Sergeant Yates reflects, “Ain’t no ex-sub commander got the fightin’ know-how of a life-long Leatherneck!”  And he’s right.

Then, as a Navy captain (equivalent to a Marine Corps colonel), Savage was much too senior to lead a squad.  This would usually be the province of a senior enlisted man or, at most, a second or first lieutenant. Putting a Navy captain in charge of a squad would be like detailing me to lead the alpha working party.

I attribute this to the confusion most non-military types (and even some in-service members) have over the rank of “captain”.  In the other services, a captain is a junior officer; in the Navy, he’s just under God.  Gary Friedrich, as I recall, was not a veteran, so he might have easily made a mistake like this.  Stan Lee should not have, though.  Several readers wrote in to complain about the same thing, but their comments were brushed aside.

Even the artists were unclear on just what kind of captain Savage was.  More than once was Savage depicted wearing the “two bars” rank of a Marine Corps captain, when he rightly should have been wearing the eagles of a Navy captain.

Now, let’s take the basic premise.  Anyone with any degree of military experience can tell that the set-up is wonky.

In order to squeeze Navy man Savage into a Howler-like squad, the premise called for an “elite team” of Marine Corps and Navy personnel.  Both are branches of the Department of the Navy, and joint efforts do occur---under a circumstance which makes more sense:  amphibious landings.

But it’s inconceivable that there could be any logic in mixing the two branches into one attack squad.  A team composed of members of a single service would have had more cohesion and less internal conflict as a unit.  No motive, within the series, was ever offered for why Savage was assigned to ramrod a Marine squad.  Consequently, common sense kept screaming to me that there should have been a Marine in charge.

Outside of needing to put the Skipper in the Sergeant Fury rôle, the other reason, most likely, that Captain Savage writer Gary Friedrich combined Navy men and Marines into a single unit was that he wanted to be able to mine conflict out of “Navy versus Marine Corps” antipathy.

I can’t give Friedrich a downcheck for this.  In the modern services, any rivalry between Navy and Marine personnel comes in the form of good-natured jibes, and only immature swabbies and gyrenes express the kind of resentment that was on display in Captain Savage.  However, during the time that the series was set, such antagonism was much more prevalent.  So, as much as it galled me to read it, Friedrich was accurate on that point.

Still, it was the only twist in what was otherwise “Sergeant Fury and the Howlers in the South Pacific”.  All the warping of believability to give the Skipper a star turn made it difficult to accept the Raiders’ adventures, even on the level of Sgt. Fury.  As it was, the missions of the Leatherneck Raiders were simply more of the same old same-old, which Fury not only did first, but did better.

Christmas Eve, 1944.

Peace on Earth and good will towards man never seemed farther away.  The world was still at war, and what would become known as the Battle of the Bulge was in its second week of savage conflict.  It was Germany’s last desperate attempt to take over Europe---a massive offensive through the Ardennes mountain region of Belgium.  American G.I.’s whom, a few weeks ago, thought they might make it home for Christmas were now embroiled in the bloodiest fighting they had seen in three long years.

If there was any safe haven amidst all this horror, a German woman, Elisabeth Vincken, and her twelve-year-old son, Fritz, were in it.  They had taken refuge in a small hunting cottage deep in the Hürtgen Forest.  It was all they had left after an Allied bombing raid had destroyed their home in Aachen, along with most of the city.

It was just the two of them.  Elisabeth’s husband, Hubert, had been ordered to serve with the civil-defence guard for the town of Monschau, five miles away.  They had meagre supplies.  For light, a few candles.  For heat, a single fireplace.  For food, some eggs, a few vegetables, mostly potatoes, and a rooster that they were trying to fatten up for a special dinner to celebrate the day that Mr. Vincken returned.

The war, it seemed, was all around them.  Elisabeth and Fritz could hear the pounding of field artillery, the rumble of bombers overhead, the hammering of gunfire, and the screams of men fighting and dying. 

The noises of war had been constant for the nine days since the Germans had launched their offensive, but on this Christmas Eve night, a lull fell over the countryside, and Elisabeth and Franz were grateful for the serenity of quiet.  For them, that was Christmas miracle enough.

Then the stillness was interrupted by a knock at their cabin door.  Believing that his father had returned, young Fritz jumped up excitedly, only to be restrained by the firm, gentle hand of his mother.  Elisabeth blew out the candles and cautiously opened the door.

She saw standing there two men, carrying---more like dragging---a third man.  Blood from a bullet hole in his leg had left a crimson trail in the snow.  They wore helmets and uniforms.  But they were the wrong kinds of helmets and uniforms.

Americans!

None of the three men looked older than twenty.  They were pale, with faces lined with dirt and desperation, and they shivered in the freezing cold.  They carried rifles and appeared to be at the very limit of human endurance.  They could have forced their way into the shelter of the cabin.  But they did not.

Instead, they looked at Elisabeth Vincken with pleading eyes.

After a long moment, Elisabeth Vincken said “Kommt rein,” and stood aside to let the solders enter.  They carried the wounded man, who looked more dead than alive, inside and laid him down on Fritz’s bed next to the kitchen.

Neither Elisabeth nor Fritz spoke English, and none of the Americans spoke German.  Mrs. Vincken then tried French.  One of the soldiers knew enough of that language to get by.

During the fighting, he explained, they had gotten separated from their outfit.  They had wandered lost in the ice-covered woods for the last three days, without food, hiding from the Germans.

Elisabeth told them to warm themselves by the fireplace, while she tended to the other soldier’s leg wound.  She tore up a bedsheet to make bandages.

To feed the hungry men, Fritz was sent to get a half-dozen potatoes from the larder, while his mother dispatched the rooster and prepared it for the cooking pot.  In an hour, the tiny cottage filled with the aroma of hot food.

Fritz was setting the table when another knock came at the door.

Mrs. Vincken answered the knock, and was met by four more soldiers in uniform.

The uniform of the Wehrmacht.  German ground troops!

Elisabeth’s face turned white.  Fritz, standing behind his mother, froze with fear.  Even at his age, he knew that sheltering enemy soldiers was considered treason, and at this stage of the war, collaborators were treated harshly.  His mother could be shot.

Mrs. Vincken stepped outside, slowly closing the door behind her, and greeted the German soldiers.  They, too, were hungry and cold and, if anything, were even younger than the American G.I.’s.  One of them, a corporal, told Elisabeth that they had gotten lost and asked if they could rest inside until morning.

Certainly they could, she told them.  “But,” she added, “we have three other guests, whom you may not consider friends.”

“Who’s inside?” demanded the corporal.  “Americans?”

The soldiers swiftly unslung their rifles.

Elisabeth met the Germans’ now-wary eyes with a stern glare.  “Listen,” she told them.  “You could be my sons, and so could those in there.  A boy with a gunshot wound, fighting for his life.  His two friends, lost like you, and just as hungry and as exhausted as you are.”

The corporal started to speak.

“This one night,” said Elisabeth, raising her voice, “this Christmas night, let us forget about killing.”

The German soldiers stared at her in awkward silence.  Before they could say anything, one way or the other, Mrs. Vincken pointed to a small shed and told the men to put their weapons in there.  Reluctantly, they did so.  Then Elisabeth invited them to go inside her home and sit down to dinner.

The German soldiers entered the cabin.

Seeing the Wehrmacht uniforms, the G.I.’s instantly grabbed for their rifles.  Until a sharp cry from Elisabeth stopped them cold.  She spoke to the G.I. who understood French.  He translated for the other two Americans. 

With uncertainty on their faces, they handed their rifles to Elisabeth, who put them out in the shed with the others.

The air was thick with tension as two groups of enemies who had been taught and trained to kill each other sat down to dinner.  Forced to sit shoulder to shoulder at the small table, or only a few feet across from each other, they glared back and forth with uncomfortable suspicion.  To soften the mood, Elisabeth introduced the Americans to the Germans. 

The American who spoke French was Jim.  The wounded man’s name was Harry.  The other G.I. was Ralph.

Gradually, the men from the other side began to speak.

The German soldiers were young, indeed.  Two of them, Heinz and Willi, were only sixteen.  The corporal was the veteran, at twenty-three.  All four were a long way from their homes.

From Fritz’s bed, Harry moaned painfully.  One of the German soldiers went over to the bed, sat down, and put on his eyeglasses.

“Do you belong to the medical corps?” asked Mrs. Vincken.

“No,” he replied, “but I studied medicine at Heidelburg until a few months ago.”

He examined Harry's wound and redressed it.  Then, in rough English, he explained to the other G.I.’s that there were no signs of infection.  “He is suffering from a severe loss of blood.  What he needs is rest and nourishment.”

The German corporal “suddenly remembered” a bottle of red wine he had in his ruck sack.  Heinz produced a loaf of rye bread from his, and they handed them over.  In return, Ralph dug out a can of instant coffee from his pack.  The booty was added to their Christmas “feast”.

One of the Americans and one of the Germans pulled the bed alongside the short, narrow table and a plate was set for Harry.  Mrs. Vincken poured him a glass of wine.  Then dinner was served.

Elisabeth said grace.  It was the same simple prayer that Fritz had heard his mother speak over every meal.  “Komm, Herr Jesus.  Seien Sie unser Gast.”  But this time, he noticed, there were tears in her eyes.  Looking around the table, the boy saw the war-weary soldiers blinking back tears, as well, their thoughts of people and places far, far away.

It didn’t take long for the seven starving soldiers to go through the chicken soup, roast potatoes, rye bread, and pineapple pudding.  By the time their plates and bowls were empty, the atmosphere in the little cottage had lightened considerably.  Warm food on a cold night has a way of doing that.

Afterward, the men exchanged cigarettes---Ecksteins for Chesterfields---and shared a smoke. 

The soldiers grabbed whatever open spots there were to found, huddled up in their winter coats, and got as comfortable as they could.  They were so bone-tired that sleep came quickly.

By daybreak, Harry had regained enough strength to be moved.  Mrs. Vincken prepared for him a glass of the wine sprinkled with some sugar.  Using a couple of poles and Elisabeth’s best tablecloth, the German soldier who had studied medicine constructed a stretcher for him.

The others enjoyed a breakfast of oatmeal and instant coffee.  Then, it was time to go.

Jim pulled out a map and the German corporal traced out a route for him.  Translating, the English-speaking one told him, “Continue along this creek, and you will find the 1^st Army rebuilding its forces on its upper course.”

“Why don’t we head for Monschau?” asked Jim.

“No,” said the German.  “We have retaken Monschau.”

To make sure they could find their way, the German corporal gave his field compass to Ralph.

Elisabeth returned their weapons to them, and standing in front of the small cabin which had been their brief sanctuary from the crucible of war, the Americans and the Germans shook hands.

“Merry Christmas!”

“Fröhliche Weihnacten!”

“I hope someday you will return home safely to where you belong,” said Elisabeth Vincken.  “May God bless and watch over you.”

They disappeared in opposite directions, and Elisabeth Vincken never saw any of them, again. 

A few weeks later, Hubert Vincken returned to his family, safe and well.  He and Elisabeth remained happily together for another nineteen years, until his death in 1963.  She followed him three years later.

As for young Fritz, he grew up and followed his father’s trade as a baker.   In 1958, he got married and moved to Hawaii, where he established his own bakery shop.  Eventually, he became a U.S. citizen.

For decades, Fritz had wondered over the fates of those seven soldiers who had come knocking on his mother’s door on that Christmas Eve in 1944.  In 1973, Readers Digest published Fritz’s first-hand account of that night. After that, it would surface occasionally, usually as a human-interest piece by a local news station.  One year, reporter Rod Ohira wrote it up for the Honolulu Advertiser.

In March of 1995, the story was mentioned on the television series Unsolved Mysteries, which led to Fritz getting the answer to his lifelong question, at least, in part.  He was contacted by the resident chaplain of a nursing home in Maryland.  The chaplain told Fritz that he knew a man who had been telling the same story.

In January, the following year, Fritz Vincken visited the Northhampton Manor Nursing Home in Maryland and was reunited with Ralph---Ralph Blank, former soldier in the 181^st Infantry, 8^th Division.  When Ralph opened a box and pulled out the compass that the German corporal had given him fifty-two years earlier, tears welled up in both men’s eyes. 

“Your mother saved my life.”

For all of her days, whenever she talked of that night, Elisabeth Vincken would say, “God was at our table.”

For those of Christian faiths, Christmas is a celebration of the birth of their saviour.  Men of other religions observe their own holy days with equal reverence.  That is as it should be.

But there is something about the season of Christmas that transcends religion.  It’s an ephemeral, almost electric feeling that fills the air and imbues us with a greater sense of kindness, of cheerfulness, of kinship.  We regard each other less by our differences and more by our common humanity.  For one brief time of the year, we . . . all of us . . . those of all faiths and those with no religion . . . are joined together by one profound spirit of good will---the Christmas spirit.

It was there, sixty-seven years ago, in that small forest cottage in the midst of a world war.

To-day, at this time of times, on this day of days, and for many more of them, may the Spirit of Christmas be at your table.

From Cheryl and myself, to all of you, our fondest wishes for a Merry Christmas, and many more of them!

Andrew A. Smith

Scripps Howard News Service

A learner's guide to 'Avengers' the movie

Avengers Assemble!

Those outside the comics world may not be familiar with that battle cry, but they will be after May 4, when The Avengers premieres in the U.S. According to reports, nobody actually shouts “Avengers Assemble” in the movie, but it goes without saying that someone in the audience will – someone who, in all likelihood, will be wearing Hulk hands or carrying a Thor hammer.

Those reports come from audiences who have seen the movie, because it has already premiered at “fan events” in select American cities in April, at New York City’s Tribeca Film Festival April 28 and at least 10 countries overseas April 27. (Trivia time: The movie is called Avengers Assemble in the UK and Ireland to avoid confusion with the British The Avengers TV show that starred Patrick Macnee from 1960 to 1969.)

And, without question, it is a hit. I had to turn off the #Avengers feed on my Twitter stream a few days ago, because the exhilarated tweets were coming in too fast to be read, much less to allow me to get any work done. It wasn’t wasted time, though, because I learned how to say “awesome” in three languages, how to shout “Hulk smash!” in Dutch (Hulk breken!) and that “ZOMG” is spelled pretty much the same everywhere.

This was not entirely unexpected. Tracking for the movie conducted by Disney showed anticipation ranking ahead of both The Hunger Games and Dark Knight Rises. The movie-review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes showed a 96 percent – 96 percent! – approval rating. And something this huge has never been done before: Five solo action movies leading to a shared-universe ensemble movie – complete with the original stars.

That’s remarkably similar to how the team originated in comics, with Hulk, Thor and a character named Ant-Man debuting in solo adventures in 1962, and Wasp and Iron Man in 1963, and the five of them forming the team later that year in Avengers #1. But that’s how many teams form in comic books, a medium which has the luxury of many monthly titles to put all the pieces in place before the big team-up.

But doing that in the movies? Nobody even thought that was possible until recently. And even after the Captain America: The First Avenger, Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, Iron Man 2 and Thor films established all the major characters (including Black Widow, Nick Fury, Hawkeye and Agent Coulson), many fans thought The Avengers a fantasy – and it probably would remained that way, except for a remarkable man tapped to be director: Joss Whedon.

Whedon is a name uttered in reverence in most fan circles. Creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dollhouse and Firefly, he is especially noted for his gift for dialogue and effective use of female characters – the latter important to Avengers especially, which was in danger of being a testosterone festival.

“Black widow is a fun character, and was played by Scarlett Johannson, two points in her favor,” he said in a series of interviews released by Disney. “She’s also a woman. I was very clear from the beginning, you can’t have an all-male team. You just can’t do it. It’s not acceptable.”

But even Whedon had doubts he could make it work.

“What they had done in the movies before was obviously extremely informative, useful and fun,” he said. “But [when he was asked to direct] Thor and Cap weren’t even close to being finished, and there’s also the element that, OK, you have all these parts, but how can you possibly bring them together? They don’t seem to co-exist.”

But that uncomfortable juxtaposition turned out to be the key for the director, who wrote the film as well.

“Ultimately that is what made me go, ‘this can be done, and this should be done.’ These people don’t belong together, these people wouldn’t get along, and as soon as that really came into focus, I realized ‘I have something to say about these people.’”

Which brings us to the question immortalized in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid: Who are these guys? And the answer is complicated, especially since Marvel Comics produces two lines of books featuring characters of great similarity: the original Marvel Universe of books, which began in 1961, and an “Ultimate” line, which began in 2000 specifically to feature the same characters updated for the 21st century and without 40 years of history. The Avengers movie is actually closer to the “Ultimate” line, but it’s really splitting hairs to worry about it. So here we go:

CAPTAIN AMERICA

“Marvel's The Avengers” CAPTAIN AMERICA (Chris Evans) Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved

What’s true in virtually all iterations of the Star-Spangled Avenger is that patriotic but scrawny 4-F Steve Rogers volunteered for “Project: Rebirth” in 1941, which made him the ultimate Super-Soldier, only to be frozen in a glacier at the end of World War II and freed in the present.

In the Avengers begun in 1963, Captain America wasn’t thawed out until the fourth issue, although in the “Ultimate” line he’s a founder of the team. In both universes he’s the face and spirit of the Avengers, and usually the leader.

“I love the character. He’s everything I wish I could be as a man,” Cap actor Chris Evans said. “He’s from another era, and I think that era really defines who he is. In the forties there was a bit more of a direct and honest sincerity to the way people behaved. [The present is] a different world he has to get used to.”

Evans has complete confidence in Whedon, whom he describes as “a fan, first and foremost.”

IRON MAN

Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.) in “Marvel’s The Avengers,” opening in theaters on May 4, 2012. The Joss Whedon–directed action-adventure is presented by Marvel Studios in association with Paramount Pictures and also stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner. © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

Actor Robert Downey Jr. played Tony Stark in two movies as the billionaire genius inventor he is in the comics, who built the powerful Iron Man armor, making him a modern-day, high-tech knight. But Downey went beyond the staid, square-jawed character Stark was in print by adding rapid-patter snark, creative impulsiveness and a bit of narcissism – which the comics have now changed to reflect.

Mark “Hulk” Ruffalo refers to Downey as “our fearless leader,” and Chris “Thor” Hemsworth calls him “fantastic” and “the godfather of the Avengers” for having made the Marvel film franchise so successful.

He also seems to get the best lines.

THOR

"Marvel's The Avengers" THOR (Chris Hemsworth) and CAPTAIN AMERICA (Chris Evans) ..Ph: Zade Rosenthal ..© 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

All you have to know is he’s the actual Norse God of Thunder, the one worshipped by Vikings as a warrior deity. In both comics and movies he’s a founding Avenger with enormous strength, the ability to summon the storm and a magic hammer that always returns to his hand.

But even in the old myths he had trouble with his temper, which launches his hero’s journey in both print and film. “He started as sort of an arrogant, petulant sort of kid,” Hemsworth said of his movie, “and by the end of it he had to learn to be a noble warrior with some sort of humility.”

Hemsworth describes his arc in Avengers as more complicated, requiring the Thunder God to decide where his loyalties lie.

HULK

L to R: BRUCE BANNER (Mark Ruffalo) and TONY STARK/IRON MAN (Robert Downey Jr.) Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

He’s big. He’s green. He’s angry. And he likes to smash things. ‘Nuff said!

In this movie, Hulk’s alter ego Bruce Banner is played by Mark Ruffalo. He’s the third to essay the role in film after Eric Bana (Hulk) and Edward Norton (Incredible Hulk), but was the first choice of both Whedon and Marvel Films in what Whedon describes as “a completely fresh take” on the character. Ruffalo the actor is held in high regard by his peers; Hemsworth said Ruffalo has “a sort of endearing quality about him,” while Evans said he’s “the sort of actor who really throws himself into the role.”

In the comics, the Hulk quit the Avengers in the second issue, and has never been much of a team player. But in both movie and print, he’s a founding Avenger – for however long that lasts.

NICK FURY

NICK FURY (Samuel L. Jackson) Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

Funny story here. When Marvel began its “Ultimate” line, they decided to make Nick Fury, who had been a white soldier in World War II, a black guy modeled on actor Samuel L. Jackson. When the movie franchise began, they decided to use the “Ultimate” version of Fury, and guess who they got to play the role? Talk about life imitating art.

“The thing about Sam is I always think there are two of him,” Whedon said. “He’s famous for the sort of bravura, Pulp Fiction speechifying; this is a guy who can out-moxie anybody in the room. But as a huge Unbreakable fan I’m also very much in love with the great well of sadness that he brings. I told him from the very beginning, and my biggest note throughout the film, was ‘Less Shaft, more Glass.’ Because what I wanted to see was a guy who, yeah, could absolutely command a room with his voice, could absolutely be the guy you would never question was in charge of this enormous organization … could be the guy who could do stuff that was morally compromised yet absolutely necessary. But at the same time would feel the burden of that. To be the leader means to separate yourself from everybody else.”

Fury is the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. (Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division), a superspy organization that deals with threats to world peace.

BLACK WIDOW

“Marvel's The Avengers” BLACK WIDOW (Scarlett Johansson) © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

In both comics and film, Black Widow is Natasha Romanoff, a former Soviet spy who works for S.H.I.E.L.D. – and is regarded as the most dangerous and capable agent on Earth.

Johannson, who reprised her Iron Man 2 role for Avengers, said the Widow is “the ultimate loner,” a professional who “is just doing a job.” She doesn’t feel the need to try to fit in, Johannson said, or prove anything. All of that is reflected in an early-release clip called “Black Widow Interrogation,” where Romanoff takes down an entire room of armed men – while tied to a chair. 

In the original comics, the Widow didn’t join the team until Avengers #111, but she was a founder – and a traitor – in the Ultimate line.

HAWKEYE

L to R: Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Captain America (Chris Evans) & Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

The Avenging Archer is a dead shot with just about any weapon, but prefers a bow and arrows often rigged to achieve specific results. The movie version hews to the “Ultimates” version, who is a black-ops agent – essentially, a sniper. The Marvel Universe archer had a romantic history with the Black Widow, and in the movie they appear to be partners and, perhaps, more.

“I had no preconceived ideas about anything,” said Hawkeye actor Jeremy Renner. “I just liked the idea that he’s a human being, with a high skill set, and he’s kind of rogue.” He said the role was one of “precision, precision, precision.”

Hawkeye is “the kind of guy who sneaks off by himself, that he’s [ital]not[end ital] a team player,” Whedon said. “He’s always going to find the highest and darkest part of the room and he’s gonna hang out there.”

Hawkeye joined the comics team in Avengers #16.

AGENT COULSON

L to R: Agent Phil Coulson (Clark Gregg) and Thor (Chris Hemsworth) Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

Non-existent in the comics (until next month), the movies (and some online webisodes) have created Phil Coulson as an unflappable field agent for S.H.I.E.L.D. It turns out he’s become a favorite – not just of fans, but also the actor who plays him, Clark Gregg.

“What I loved about Coulson right away in the first movie [Iron Man] was that at first he seems kind of like an annoying bureaucrat,” Gregg said, “[but] as the story goes along, to my great thrill, he turns out to be a much more formidable character. … Every time I get the script I’m very excited to find out, like, ‘Oh, oh, I’m that? I know that? I handle this?’” And that has certainly kind of culminated to an extent in the Avengers where Coulson’s very much involved with trying to pull the team together.”

AGENT HILL

Group shot from Los Angeles fan event includes Clark Gregg, Tom Hiddleston, Cobie Smulders and Chris Hemsworth.

In the comics, Maria Hill is a high-ranking S.H.I.E.L.D. agent who once was even Director. In the movie, she appears to be equally high-ranking, possibly Fury’s second-in-command – and she gets to drive the Helicarrier, a flying aircraft carrier.

“She’s very intelligent and highly trained and very capable,” said Hill actress Cobie Smulders, “and I kind of  like the idea that she’s this woman in a man’s world. And I think she’s extremely by-the-book, and I think that’s hurting her, because she’s working with a man who’s sort of works outside the rules and I feel like that dynamic is in this movie a lot.”

LOKI

“Marvel's The Avengers” LOKI (Tom Hiddleston) Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

In myth, comics and film, the Norse God of Mischief is Thor’s half-brother and chief nemesis. In myth, it is Loki who actually brings about the destruction of Asgard (called “Ragnarok”). In the comics, he was the villain whom the Avengers first gathered to defeat – a foe too powerful for any one of them to combat.

“The thing I found most challenging [was] to inhabit the truth of his emotional heartache,” actor Tom Hiddleston said of his character. “To try to think myself into a place of destructive rage and jealousy and ambition, of arrogance and tyranny. And have it all fueled by this psychological damage he’s been through. He feels cheated and betrayed by his brother, and by the world. However, that is the great joy of the character. That’s a lot of meat on the bone for any actor to chew on. And it’s my enormous privilege to play him.”

Whedon was unstinting in his praise of Hiddleston. 

“At the end of the day, the thing that makes it work is Tom. Because he breathes a lot of life into Loki. He doesn’t just twirl his mustache, although God knows he gets to be more of the classic Loki than he got to in Thor. In Thor he had a very poignant and, I thought, beautifully realized arc. In this, he’s past that. You can still see hints of it. You can still see the resentments and the vulnerability and the big brother issues and all that stuff, but he’s also gone to a happier place. And Tom can really bring that presence, the texture, so you go ‘Yeah, this guy, he’s going to destroy you, either from the front or from the back, but you don’t know which.’”

And that assortment of egos and hubris, “damaged creatures” as Loki describes them, are the Avengers who assemble in the movie. And when you hear “Avengers assemble!” in the theater, it just may be this writer shouting it.

In a Captain America shirt. With a shield.

Contact Andrew A. Smith of the Memphis Commercial Appeal at capncomics@aol.com. For more Avengers goodness, go to his YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/captaincomics1.

“Marvel's The Avengers” (L-R) CAPTAIN AMERICA (Chris Evans),TONY STARK (Robert Downey Jr.) Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

“Marvel's The Avengers” NICK FURY (Samuel L. Jackson) Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson, left) talks with Steve Rogers (Chris Evans, right), aka Captain America, in “Marvel’s The Avengers,” opening in theaters on May 4, 2012. The Joss Whedon–directed action-adventure is presented by Marvel Studios in association with Paramount Pictures and also stars Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner. Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow in “Marvel’s The Avengers,” opening in theaters on May 4, 2012. The Joss Whedon–directed action-adventure is presented by Marvel Studios in association with Paramount Pictures and also stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth and Samuel L. Jackson. Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

“Marvel's The Avengers” (L-R) Robert Downey Jr., Josh Whedon, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) is the director of the international peacekeeping organization known as S.H.I.E.L.D in “Marvel’s The Avengers,” opening in theaters on May 4, 2012. The Joss Whedon–directed action-adventure is presented by Marvel Studios in association with Paramount Pictures and also stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson and Jeremy Renner. Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

"Marvel's The Avengers" THOR (Chris Hemsworth) and CAPTAIN AMERICA (Chris Evans) ..Ph: Zade Rosenthal ..© 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

"Marvel's The Avengers" THOR (Chris Hemsworth) and CAPTAIN AMERICA (Chris Evans) ..Ph: Zade Rosenthal ..© 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

L to R: JOSS WHEDON (Director) and BLACK WIDOW (Scarlett Johansson) Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

Marvel's The Avengers” (L-R) BLACK WIDOW (Scarlett Johansson), HAWKEYE (Jeremy Renner) Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.

Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow in “Marvel’s The Avengers,” opening in theaters on May 4, 2012. The Joss Whedon–directed action-adventure is presented by Marvel Studios in association with Paramount Pictures and also stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Hemsworth and Samuel L. Jackson. Ph: Zade Rosenthal © 2011 MVLFFLLC. TM & © 2011 Marvel. All Rights Reserved.