The Flash's Final Fling--Twice

Here's a real oddity from DC's Silver Age. In March, 1966, Flash #159 bore this cover:

That's something of an unusual cover for DC; we'd expect to see it more from Marvel (as indeed we did several times in Spiderman). But more unusual still was seeing this cover on the next regular issue of the Flash, #161 (#160 was an 80-Page Giant):

Notice, down at the bottom, that Julius Schwartz was advertising another, completely different story, also based on the cover from #159. As the splash page notes:

A couple of comments before I proceed with the review. First, it's worth noting that neither story was written by the Flash's main writer, John Broome. The first version was scripted by Gardner Fox, while the second was contributed by Bob Kanigher. Second, the stories amount to breaking the fourth wall, as announcing that you're publishing a second story based on the cover is admitting that these are fictional stories.

The Fox story starts with Kid Flash and Barry Allen visiting the offices of Dr McNider (aka Dr Midnight), an Earth-Two physician. The doc is pleased to see the Earth-One heroes, but he wonders why Barry's not in his uniform. It turns out that the Flash is no more, because he feels underappreciated:

Dr McNider puts him under and probes to find out the real answer:

It turns out that a future criminal with the improbable name of Frand Mattar had sent a bomb back in time to Central City in 1966, which would explode if a high-speed wave hit it; Mattar had a trigger that would cause this to happen and was blackmailing the authorities to force them to allow him to loot at will. Of course, there was another thing that could cause the bomb to go off; if the Flash traveled at super-speed. Thus the "chronal officer" had hypnotized Barry to make him believe that nobody in Central City appreciated his efforts, so that he would resign.

Armed with this knowledge, Flash and his junior partner travel to the future, defeat Frand Mattar, and return to 1966 just in time to prevent the bomb explosion from destroying the city. Flash gets banner headlines and the key to the city, showing that he is still Central City's hero.

Comments: Some tricky time paradox problems with this story. Wouldn't the future world know that the Flash had saved the city? And why would Frand Mattar send a bomb into the past in the first place (other than to provide Fox with a rationale for the cover)? Wouldn't a bomb about to affect a city in 3780 be more compelling to the people of that era?

However, the Fox effort is a masterpiece compared to the second story. Kanigher compares Flash's relationship with his uniform to that of a soldier and his gun.

Whaaaaat? And even more oddly, Kanigher has the uniform answer:

The scene shifts to the day of Barry and Iris' wedding. Iris has planned things so that even her perennially late boyfriend will arrive on time; she has told him the nuptials take place an hour before the actual scheduled time. But as Barry is walking to the church he spots a super-speed turtle (no, I am not kidding):

He finds himself in a super-speed dimension, where ironically that turtle is considered quite slow. But when he travels back to our dimension, he discovers:

Iris breaks off with Barry, and in the days that follow, he begins to feel like his costume has ruined his life. So he discards it:

He visits Iris in the secluded cabin where they had planned their honeymoon, but when he arrives she is being menaced by a giant bear. He tries to save her without using his super-speed, but is kayoed by the grizzly. Fortunately, it turns out that the bear is a retired circus performer. However, Iris is not thrilled at Barry's effort, and indeed, compares him unfavorably to the Flash. Barry returns to Central City, where his uniform, discovered by a passing hitchhiker, is on display at the Flash Museum:

Moved, Barry puts on the uniform again, just as Iris enters the room, followed shortly by some crooks.  As the Flash, he quickly corrals the villains.  But now Iris will know his secret identity, right?  Well, no:

Cue happy ending, with Barry back as the Flash and Iris back in love with him.

 Comments: Sweet jeebus, this is a wacky story!  Kanigher's anthropomorphizing inanimate objects works in the war stories, but it is wildly out of place here.  One thing that I do find interesting is that Kanigher gives Barry a better reason for quitting (and one that is more in line with what Lee would do with Spiderman a year later in ASM #50).

More about →

Tracers: The Ape Cover Limit

I have read in several different places that Julius Schwartz had a file in his desk which proved that DC comics featuring apes on the cover sold better in general than comics without simians.  I believe that Schwartz even mentioned this in his autobiography, Man of Two Worlds.  It has also been claimed that to avoid overexposure, the number of ape covers was strictly limited by DC management to one per month.

This latter claim has never made a lot of sense to me.  If your objective as an editor or a publisher is to sell as many comic books as you can (and I suspect that is, or ought to be the goal), then why would you refrain from doing something that has been proven to work in the past?  And DC generally published 30 comics a month, would two gorilla covers really saturate the market?

So I decided to take a look at the matter.  I started with 1960 and used the DC Indexes Time Machine to look at all the covers for a given month quickly.  Note that the default option is for comics on sale in a given month, not cover dates.  It seemed reasonable to use that option, since the concern was not to have to many ape covers on the newsstands at once.

First observation: If DC was worried about saturating the market with similar covers, it sure doesn't show.  In 1960, as many others have noted, DC had an almost endless variety of covers featuring aliens, monsters and dinosaurs.  It was not until looking at comics on sale in April that I located an ape cover:

Okay, so it's a gorilla; I suspect that Schwartz meant ape as a very generic term.  The next month featured one of DC's most famous apes:

After an absence of apes in June, July included an alien ape:

DC then resisted the siren call of the apes until December:

Strange Adventures thus becomes the first series to hit two apes in one year.

And then came 1961.  I am astounded to report that I can find no comics that went on sale from DC in that year which included apes, gorillas, or monkeys on the cover.  There appears to be only one sensible conclusion; at this point, Schwartz had not yet developed his evidence about simians on the cover boosting the sales.

In January 1962, Grodd made his first cover appearance:

This is further evidence that Schwartz had not yet discovered the link between sales and gorillas, as Grodd had appeared four times already inside the comics.

The following month saw the debut of Bizarro Titano:

After three months's hiatus, a simian was prominently featured on the cover of Batman Annual #3:

And once again, there was a gap all the way to March 1963.  You might think it would be hard for Tomahawk, a revolutionary-era hero to encounter an ape.  You would be wrong:

In June of that year, we got one of the classic ape covers:

Let me tell you, if an gorilla is sliding into third base, it's a pretty brave fielder standing there waiting for the throw.

Grodd popped up on the first Flash Annual in August:

And the Great White Ape appeared in October's Star Spangled War #111 that same month, the first time we've seen two in the same calendar period.

But that's it for 1963.  Monsieur Mallah appeared on the cover of Doom Patrol #86 in January 1964:

Tomahawk's giant ape returned in May:

But then there was another gap until November when Jerry Lewis #86 featured a King-Kong type cover.  In December there were two ape covers: Hawkman #6 and Fox and Crow #90.

By this point I was getting pretty skeptical.  Out of 60 months and about 1800 comics, only 16 covers had featured an ape or a gorilla.  And 1965 was not much different, with only two ape covers.

Ah, but then came 1966, and suddenly the African invasion.  In January, came Strange Adventures #186:

In February there were two covers:

And Monsieur Mallah appeared on the cover of Brave & Bold #65.

After a couple months gap, an ape popped up on Sea Devils #30 in May, and Bob Hope #100 in June.  Nothing for July, but August saw Hawkman #16, September had King Colosso yet again in Tomahawk (this time shooting a bow and arrow no less), October had Jimmy Olsen marrying a female gorilla, and November's Showcase #66 had Bwana Beast duking it out with an ape.  All told, there were nine different covers with the simian theme in 1966.

And if you think about it, it makes sense that the editors at DC were pulling out all the stops that year.  Although the company as a whole did well with Batmania, the gains were very uneven.  Batman sales skyrocketed, but the Superman-related titles all dipped as did many other books.

In 1967, there were seven more ape-featured covers, with only two coming in one month: September had Jerry Lewis 103 and Plastic Man #7.

Overall impressions:

1. The number of ape covers do not seem excessive.  However, there certainly was a jump in 1966-67; those two years saw as many of those covers as had been seen in the six years previous.

2. There is little evidence for a hard and fast rule against two ape covers in one month.  There were three months where apes did appear on two covers.  I suspect that the real edict was not to overdo it.

In 1968, the number of simian covers did drop, at least until this series launched:

More about →

The Secret Origin of the Atom (Ray Palmer)

This came up in a chatroom yesterday, and since I haven't talked about it before, I thought it was the perfect topic for a post. Of all the DC Silver Age reboots, only the Atom was significantly different than his Golden Age counterpart. Barry Allen and Jay Garrick had essentially the same power of blinding speed. Hal Jordan and Alan Scott were interchangeable; they had green rings of incredible power but smite either of them with a club of yellow wood and they'd be helpless. There was no real difference between the two Hawkmen or the dueling Aquamen.

But Ray Palmer's Atom was nothing like the Al Pratt version. The Golden Age Atom had no real super-powers; he was just a very strong short guy who never got shorter or bigger. The Silver Age version, of course, had the ability to shrink himself down to a very tiny size and then become much larger again; he could also control his weight so that one moment he was as light as a feather, and the next had the full force of 180 pounds behind him. So it is worth wondering why Julius Schwartz and Gardner Fox decided to give Ray Palmer significantly different abilities from Al Pratt.

For starters, I suspect that Palmer was intended to be a much more important character than his Golden Age counterpart. The GA Atom was never a cover feature; while he did appear on the covers of All-Star with his fellow Justice Society members, he never headlined All-American Comics, where his solo adventures appeared. The Silver Age Atom would have to hold down his own title.

But I suspect that other tiny heroes in the movies and on TV also influenced the decision. In 1957 (about four years before Ray Palmer's first appearance in Showcase #34), Richard Matheson's story, the Incredible Shrinking Man was brought to the silver screen. It's a terrific and suspenseful story of a man who suddenly finds himself becoming shorter and shorter with time. In the end, he discovers how threatening life is for a miniature man, as he's attacked in succession by the family cat and a spider in the basement. Here are some key moments in the film:

 

But there was also a 1959 TV series, obviously inspired by the Incredible Shrinking Man, that appears a more direct inspiration for the Ray Palmer Atom. World of Giants is the story of a six-inch high FBI agent:
Although the Atom could change his size to virtually anything under his normal height, the most common size that Ray Palmer assumed was six inches high, exactly the same height as Mel Hunter. For example:

And:

So it seems pretty apparent that the Silver Age Atom was inspired by this long-forgotten TV series. A hat tip to my comicchat buddy Jon for mentioning the TV show, which I confess I'd never seen before last night.

More about →

Fifty Years Ago This Month

The multiverse begins as Flash #123 goes on sale.

This story was implied by the very first Barry Allen Flash story in Showcase #4, which opened with Barry enjoying a Golden Age Flash comic during his lunch break:

That's an interesting decision by the writer (Bob Kanigher), I suppose chosen to explain why Barry quickly decides to become the Flash himself when the lightning bolt hits a page later. But it does raise some uncomfortable questions. If the superhero comics are assumed to take place in the real world, then in what world did the Jay Garrick stories take place, since Barry clearly considers the Golden Age Flash to be a fictional character.

As the Flash of Two Worlds story starts, Iris is trying to put on a show for her pet charity, a group of orphans. Unfortunately, the magician she arranged to provide the entertainment has not shown up, and it looks like the kids will be disappointed. Barry suggests that he call the police station, as he just saw the Flash over there, and perhaps the Scarlet Speedster will agree to dazzle the youngsters.

He plays a game of tennis with himself, and then tries the Indian fakir trick of climbing a rope, only to disappear suddenly:

The Flash finds himself suddenly in a field outside the city. But not Central City, as he quickly discovers. Although some of the landmarks look the same, the signs in the metropolis indicates this is Keystone City. But isn't that where... on a hunch, Barry looks into a phone book and sure enough:

So he visits the Garrick residence, where we learn that Jay has aged since his Golden Age adventures and that he has married his former girlfriend, Joan Williams. Barry explains that he knows all about Jay's adventures as a superhero, and gives his theory:

Barry has further thoughts on how Jay Garrick ended up as a fictional character on his own world:

That's interesting because Fox himself was writing this particular tale, in place of usual Flash scripter, John Broome. Note that this maintains the implication that Barry Allen's stories were taking place in "our" world, since Gardner Fox was a real person. This would be maintained as the official story for years, although it was eventually discarded in a 1970s Flash tale, when we learned that our Earth was Earth-Prime, while Barry was from Earth-1 and Jay Garrick from Earth-2.

This concept of multiple Earths became very popular in the DC universe for years, as it gave writers and editors additional "outs". If a current story contradicted another one from years ago, well that old story took place on an alternate Earth. It also gave them an opportunity to play "What if" games without quite admitting that these were "imaginary stories".

Of course, it also caused uncomfortable questions as well. For starters, since Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman had appeared in or were mentioned in several Justice Society stories, did that mean that the Golden Age appearances of those stars had also not taken place on Earth 1? DC was not yet ready to confront the implications of those questions, and would continue to dodge them until near the end of the decade.

As it happens, Jay Garrick has been debating coming out of retirement due to a series of strange robberies. We learn that three Golden Age villains, the Thinker, the Fiddler and the Shade are responsible. They have recently escaped jail and are hoping to defeat their old nemesis.

The individual Flashes split up and combat the Thinker and the Shade, but are defeated. They combine forces to face the Fiddler, but his fiddle controls them:

But they manage to plug up their ears with small jewels, and make quick work of the trio.

Afterwards, Barry returns to his own world and has an idea:


This story led to many more, including the annual JLA/JSA teamups, nearly annual Barry Allen/Jay Garrick pairings, as well as stories featuring the GA Green Lantern and Hal Jordan. It is, as I mentioned in an early post on this blog, one of the five most important DC comics of the Silver Age.

Update: Aaron reminds me of an interesting tidbit about that Flash issue that Barry Allen is reading at the opening of Showcase #4. If you look closely at the cover, especially this panel from an earlier page:

You will see that he appears to be reading Flash #13. The amusing thing is that's not what Flash #13's cover looks like:

You see, Flash Comics back in the Golden Age was an anthology title, like Action or Detective in the Silver Age, and Flash alternated covers with Hawkman, with the latter appearing on the odd-numbered issues all the way up to #87. In fact, that cover could not have appeared as on the covers featuring the Flash, the little inset picture was of Hawkman, and vice-versa.

Jim notes that there were two GA and Silver Age Atom teamups as well, but no pairings of the 1940s Hawkman with his 1960s counterpart. I suspect the problem there was that the two characters were simply too similar to make for an interesting combination.

More about →

Face Off

As I have noted in the past, one of DC's major trends of the late 1950s and early 1960s was to add continuing characters to the magazines that did not already feature them. The war books picked up Sgt Rock, Jeb Stuart, Gunner and Sarge, etc., while Mystery in Space added Adam Strange, Tales of the Unexpected featured Space Ranger, and House of Secrets highlighted Mark Merlin.

Strange Adventures, edited by Julius Schwartz, tried something different. Instead of adding one feature which appeared every issue, Schwartz rotated several recurring features: Star Hawkins, the Atomic Knights and the Space Museum appeared regularly over the course of several years. In addition, particularly successful one-shot characters were often brought back. The Faceless Creature was probably the most notable as he appeared on the covers of three* issues over the course of as many years. Those of you who are fans of the Brave and the Bold show on Cartoon Network may recognize him as the Hunter who served as Starro's herald in a two-part episode of that series.

As the first story (Strange Adventures #124, January 1961) begins, two Highway Patrolmen in South Dakota, Jim Boone and Bob Colby, are investigating the disappearance of the heads from Mount Rushmore. The heads disappear along with some other famous giant faces around the world, but then are returned. An alien spacecraft lands and:

After preventing them from firing their weapons as shown on the cover, the alien introduces himself as Klee-Pan from the planet Klaramar, which is a sub-atomic world revolving within a single atom of the Planet Jupiter. He explains that he is looking for a giant head which will unlock a vault where a bomb was hidden by a villain named Chen Yull (sometimes referred to as Chan Yull and also as Chun Yull). If the head is not located, the bomb will destroy the entire solar system in one second.

Well, one second on Klaramar, which is quite a bit longer on Earth:

The mathematician in me couldn't resist calculating that out. If one Klaramar day equals 1,000,000 Earth years, then one Klaramar second equals about 11-1/2 Earth years.

Klee-Pan has tried all the famous giant faces on Earth, but none of them work. Fortunately, Jim realizes the secret:

So he suggests the Woman in the Moon. Of course, most of us have heard of it as the Man in the Moon, but apparently the Chinese and South Dakotans have the gender reversed.

While the trio head to the Moon, Klee-Pan explains how his people became faceless:

That sequence would appear in each subsequent Faceless Creature story. They take the Woman in the Moon to Saturn, but Chen Yull has planned for this and destroys the face with ray guns. But Jim has another bright idea:

And by repairing the face, they are able to open the lock, defuse the bomb, and save the solar system. Klee-Pan offers them a reward, but all they want is for the face on the Moon to be restored.

The Faceless Creature returned in Strange Adventures #142 (July 1962). Chan Yull has learned that his prior plot to destroy the Solar System failed, partially because of the efforts of the two South Dakota Highway Patrolmen. So he creates a new bomb and uses them as the triggers:

But when they arrive the bomb does not explode. It turns out that Jim and Bob were given the power of telepathy by Klee-Pan, and so they had ordered each other not to explode the bomb. Klee-Pan sends them back to Earth with weapons that subdue Chen Yull and send him back to Klaramar.

Jim and Bob find themselves compelled to construct an odd, scientific device. When they turn it on:

Chen Yull heads to the UN Building, where he has a strange demand:

But when they do as he asks:

That seems a very strange quirk indeed. How useful an adaptation is it for a people to only be willing to destroy their own planet? Chen Yull reveals his fiendish plan:

Jim and Bob use the weapons they defeated Chen Yull with in the previous story on each other, shrinking themselves down while sending themselves to Klaramar. Once they are able to communicate with Klee Pan, he defeats Chen Yull and restores the two planets (and the Highway Patrolmen) to their normal sizes.
One other oddity about the series; according to the GCD, the pencils on the three stories were done by three different artists: Mike Sekowsky, Carmine Infantino and Gil Kane. I was able to identify the latter two, but the first one really doesn't look much like Sekowsky at all to me except for a few panels. Then again, I noticed how heavy the inks were on that story (by Murphy Anderson), so maybe it's just a case of the pencils being overwhelmed.

*Technically two different faceless creatures appeared on the three covers; Klee-Pan on the first issue and Chan Yull on the other two.

More about →