The Secret Origin of the Phantom Zone

Wikipedia presents the following information on the Phantom Zone:

The Phantom Zone is a fictional prison dimension featured in the Superman comic books and related media published by DC Comics. It first appeared in Adventure Comics #283 (April 1961), and was created by Robert Bernstein and George Papp

Ah, but as I have discussed in the past, Mort Weisinger and his writers often swiped ideas and entire plotlines from earlier stories and so it is with the Phantom Zone. The precursor to the Zone first appears in Action #131 (April 1949), a full 12 years before its official debut. Here's the cover:

As you can see, the original machine was quite cumbersome, but the effect is clearly the same. The person's color fades, then becomes white (for the benefit of the reader, as the stories always made it clear that the characters in the zone were actually invisible).
In the Action #131 story, Luthor has come up with a new invention:

A teleportation device, in other words. But, in typical comic book criminal fashion the commercial applications for his machine don't occur to Luthor. Never mind that he could instantly put out of business every trucking, railroad and airline company, Luthor's bright idea is to put it to use robbing banks.
In the Silver Age tale, Superboy discovers the Phantom Zone projector (initially called the Punishment Machine) in a box of forbidden weapons that Jor-El had shot into space. He is accidentally sent into the Zone when a lizard presses the button as he stands in front of the projector.

In the Golden Age, Superman is holding a receiver when Luthor's teleportation device signals it. The crook thinks quickly:

In the stories, Superboy and Superman are unable to touch anything in the physical world, or communicate directly with anyone. But there is an indirect method of communication in both stories, and it is the same each time:


Incidentally, that bit with phantoms communicating via an electric typewriter was used at least once more that I'm aware of. Lois let Perry, Jimmy and Clark know she was still alive in Superman #129's The Ghost of Lois Lane:


Update: Commander Benson drops by in the comments and notes a very similar theme in the Atom Man vs Superman serial from 1950. Note particularly Chapter 8, which has Superman sent by Luthor into the "Empty Doom" where he exists solely as a phantom, and where his only means of communication with the corporeal world is... you guessed it, via an electric typewriter. From what I've been able to observe of the serial, it's largely based on the story from Action #131.

More about →

Brave & Bold #57: DC's First Ambivalent Superhero

Up till this point, DC's superheroes had all pretty much relished their superpowers. And why not? Who wouldn't want to be able to zoom at super speed, or have a ring that obeys your every command, or shrink down to the size of an atom... provided, of course, that you could also be normal whenever desired.

Ben Grimm, aka the Thing from the Fantastic Four, changed all that. While he had extraordinary strength, his powers came with a curse: he looked like a pile of orange rocks 24-7. Granted, it's been done to death since, but in the early 1960s this was pretty revolutionary stuff. When the Thing was followed up by characters like the Hulk, Spiderman and the X-Men, it was clear that Marvel was onto something. Comics fans liked heroes with permanent problems, not just the temporary annoyance of a Mr Mxyzptlk or a brush with Red Kryptonite.

DC obviously took note and responded with Metamorpho. Rex Mason was a world-famous adventurer who traveled the globe. His employer was Simon Stagg, a wealthy, but unscrupulous tyrant, who also had a gorgeous daughter named Sapphire. Rex and Sapphire were engaged, much to the dismay of Stagg's brutish assistant, Java, an unfrozen caveman who was smitten with the young woman himself.

As the story begins, Rex is returning from a visit to the jungles of South America, where he was in search of the formula used by witch doctors to create their shrunken heads. He makes quite an entrance:

That turns out to be a gag he's pulled on Stagg and the mayor, who had planned a ceremony and speech to greet the famed traveler. Actually Mason had parachuted from the plane earlier and landed in Sapphire's convertible. When Stagg's goons order the pair back to the millionaire's mansion, they make the most of their time:

Cute bit, probably inspired by the James Bond flicks of the time. Stagg has a new assignment for Mason, one that will pay him enough for him to marry Sapphire:

However, when they locate the hidden pyramid, problems arise. At first, the pyramid glows red hot. Then later, after finding the Orb of Ra, Java turns on Rex:

When he recovers, Rex finds himself trapped:

After passing out from the heat, Rex is surprised to discover he's still alive, but dramatically changed:

He's still sealed inside the pyramid, but "a strange thought occurs to his confused brain" and he turns gaseous, seeping through the cracks to the outside.

Java has escaped in a backup plane. Rex quickly realizes that with his new powers he can fix his damaged machine:

In the next chapter, Mason appears to have been boning up on those chemical lessons, as he seeks his revenge on Java and Stagg:

When Stagg tries to shoot him, Rex learns he's invulnerable to bullets in his new form. But not invulnerable to something else:

He and Stagg reach an uneasy truce. Stagg will try to help him get back to his normal state, and Rex will not destroy his castle. There follows a couple pages where Stagg experiments on Metamorpho, which functions mostly to define his powers. He's virtually invulnerable (except for that Orb of Ra) and he can change into almost any element found in the human body.

But Stagg is unable to reverse the incredible change. Java goes nuts and tries to burn down the castle, but Rex saves Sapphire, whose feelings have not changed:

She suggests that he use his powers for good until he can be changed back. Meanwhile, Daddy has hidden the orb in a shark tank he conveniently keeps in another part of the castle.

Comments: Entertaining origin issue, enlivened quite a bit by Ramona Fradon's artwork (embellished by longtime Batman inker Charles Paris). The story was written by Bob Haney. Oddly enough, when DC came up with their next conflicted superhero, he had a very similar quadrifurcated appearance:

There was at least one significant difference between Metamorpho and the Thing. While both were appalled at their freaky-freak McAlien freak appearance, Ben was capable of being irascible even about other things, while Rex remained pretty much happy-go-lucky except about his appearance.

More about →

Secret Origins: The Bullpen Bulletins

One of the more distinctive features of the Marvel Comics of the 1960s was the Bullpen Bulletins page. About 1/2 hype, 1/4 advertising, and 1/4 legitimate news, the BB's functioned as Stan's Soapbox (and eventually, they even added a special section on the page entitled just that).

But like everything at Marvel, the Bullpen Bulletins page did not debut in a flash of inspiration; rather it evolved over time. Initially "Marvel" only had one superhero comic, The Fantastic Four, so there wasn't much need for a BB page, although starting with the third issue, Stan did put in a letters page, which is where the Bullpen Bulletins actually started. In FF #5, Stan appended a little comment at the end of the letters column:



You could argue that was the beginning of the Bullpen Bulletins, and I wouldn't disagree too hard. In FF #10, though, come some unmistakable signs:



Note the lack of a hyphen in Spiderman.

And:



In FF #13, the letters column included a "Special Announcements Section":



As I have mentioned in the past, this was about the time (April 1963) that Marvel could credibly have a "line" of superheroes, and the next issue saw the debut of "Marvel Comics" on the cover, and the continuation of the Special Announcements Section:



This lasted until FF #20, when the Special Announcements Section got bigger (taking up almost half of the second letters page), and a key change was made:



It's not quite the Mighty Marvel Checklist, but it's the beginning of one. In FF #26 we get the first appearance of "Item":



I never quite understood the need to say "Item" in front of every tidbit, but it became a very durable part of the Bullpen Bulletins.

In FF #33, we saw the first named appearance of the Mighty Marvel Checklist:



With FF #38, Stan did away with the Special Announcements Section, in favor of sprinkling the announcements throughout the letters page. In FF #41, we saw the first appearance of the Merry Marvel Bullpen Page, although it was really just an ad for FF tee shirts and the Merry Marvel Marching Society.

Finally, in FF #45 we got a look at the future:



Incidentally, while I appreciate Marvel's Essentials and DC's Showcase reprints as a good way to read these issues on a budget, it is a shame that filler material like this is almost never reprinted. I got these scans from Marvel's 2005 complete FF collection on CD-ROM, which are an even better value and contain beautiful scans of every page of every issue.

Coming soon: A complete index to the Bullpen Bulletins for each year!

More about →