Titano, the Super-Ape

That one wins a booby prize for being one of the covers that give away the ending to the story; I talked about a Flash issue that did the same a few years back. Incidentally, this post was inspired by Silver Age Gold's "Ape-ril in January" suggestion.

The tale begins with Lois hosting a TV charity telethon. Among the acts is Toto, an intelligent chimp:

A pair of pie-throwing comedians accidentally hit Toto, and Lois wins his permanent affection by wiping off the filling from his back. His trainer alerts Lois to a real scoop; Toto is going to shot into space on a rocket as a "publicity stunt". Of course, this was at the time (1959) when manned space flight had not yet been accomplished (Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was the first, in 1961). Several monkeys were shot into space by the US around this time, including a South American squirrel monkey named Gordo in late 1958, so the story was pretty topical.

Lois demonstrates her versatility by broadcasting over the radio news of the space flight. Two glowing meteors, one kryptonite and one uranium, collide near the rocket. Will they have any effect on Toto? You betcha:

Because of his huge size, Lois renames him Titano. He grabs Lois, making her fear for her life. She calls over the radio for help from Superman, but when he arrives they learn that Titano now has kryptonite vision.

The ape takes Lois to a coal yard, where he tries to mimic a feat he saw Superman do on the telethon; squeezing a lump of coal into a diamond. But with his curiosity, Titano is a threat to society; he destroys an unmanned blimp and plays with a freight train. The army has Lois lure him into a trap:

That's when Lois has her brainstorm. Monkey see, monkey do, right? She gets Titano to mimic several actions, and eventually tricks him into putting on the lead-shielded glasses as shown on the cover. This enables Superman to hurl him into the past, where he can live with the dinosaurs:

That last scene is something of a swipe from the movie King Kong, where Kong and the T-Rex battle it out. Note as well that this time-travel vision is one of Superman's "superpowers that time forgot" as Mark Engblom put it.

Titano returned in Superman #138, with a cover even more obviously inspired by King Kong:

I should get that one CGC'ed; looks like mint to me! ;)

We learn that Superman had already forgotten his time-travel vision:

He spots a giant ape, and is momentarily confused, until he realizes that it's his old sparring partner, Titano. Unfortunately, with his trademark carelessness in handling alien objects, Supes failed to realize that the "time-television set" was actually a time-transporter, and it brings the chimp back to 1960.

This story comes after Mort Weisinger had taken over as official editor of the Superman line (although he was the de facto editor for years before) and so we see more of the Silver Age Superman than in the prior appearance of Titano (which came in the final issue credited to Whitney Ellsworth). He's got his robots, which would help handle the situation, but:

I swear, Clark's landlord was constantly redecorating his place back in the Silver Age. This is one of the more amusing things about the robots; they almost never really helped out Superman for the obvious reason that they would make the stories too simple. Still Superman has his lead-lined suit:

Supes had invented that about a year before in Action #249. But there is a complication; Titano has kidnapped Lois and so he can't kayo the ape without risking harm to her.

He notices that Titano seems interested in large, round objects; he grabs a hot-air balloon and then a bathysphere, but then discards them in frustration. What is he looking for? Superman flies into the past and finds giant coconuts where Titano was when he first spied him on the time-transporter. He returns to the present and drops the coconuts nearby. While the ape enjoys his meal, Superman saves Lois, then knocks out Titano and returns him to the prehistoric Earth.

Titano reappeared many more times in the Silver Age and even afterward; arguably he was a part of the Superman Family. There was even a Bizarro Titano.

The Silver Age Superman

The Silver Age Superman was dramatically different from the Golden Age Superman. Aside from the very early stories, the Golden Age Superman tales tended to be more of a whimsical series. Perhaps sensing that Superman was too powerful to face ordinary crooks, the Golden Age Superman generally found himself up against conmen like J. Wilber Wolfingham, or other enemies who used guile and cunning like the Prankster or Luthor.

The other option was to weaken Superman, and this DC, especially under Weissinger's editorship, began pursuing with a vengeance. Although Green Kryptonite had been introduced in the comics as early as 1949, and in the Superman radio series years earlier than that, it had only featured in occasional stories prior to the Silver Age.

In Adventure Comics #255, Red Kryptonite made its first appearance in a Superboy story. Red K had an unpredictable effect on Kryptonians, and what's more, each piece affected them differently, conveniently for plot purposes a period of exactly 24 hours. It would be quite a task to list all the changes that Red K worked on Superman over the years, but a short listing includes making him only able to speak and write Kryptonese, turning him into a dragon, causes him to lose his powers temporarily, and even split him into two people--one Superboy, one Clark Kent.



DC expanded the Kryptonite line to three varieties in Superman #157. Quex-Ul, a Phantom Zone Prisoner, is released and vows to get revenge on Superman for his imprisonment. He has observed Gold K taking away the powers of a Krytonian beast permanently, and knows it will do the same to Superman.

Of course, the problem with Gold K is that being permanent, DC could never use it on Superman, only threaten its use.

In addition to Kryptonite, we learned that Superman had another vulnerability: Magic. This required the return of a Golden Age villain, Mr Mxyzptlk (although in the GA he was known as Mxyztplk), who proceeded to appear with alarming regularity. Several other characters used magic to cause trouble for Superman as well:



We also learned that Superman lost his powers under the influence of a sun that was not yellow, like Earth's:


The funny thing is that whenever the plot called for Superman to pick up the nearest mountain, they'd have him do it without blinking an eye, which just kept up the pressure to weaken him.

Green Kryptonite Speaks!

Occasionally during the Silver Age, writers got the idea to tell the story from the standpoint of an inanimate object. I've written in the past about how Wonder Woman's Golden Lariat and her Invisible Plane got a chance to tell their stories. It was an original idea, but perhaps carried too far in a series of stories called Tales of Kryptonite.

The series ran for four issues in Superman, #173, 176, 177 and 179, as the chunk of Kryptonite, which had originally been part of a statue awarded to Jor-El, found itself interacting with various members of the Superman family. Hilariously, the Green K here tries mental telepathy:



At the end of the story, Superboy is oddly unaffected by the piece of Green K; it turns out that Lex Luthor had accidentally created a device that made Superman invulnerable to its radiation. But Superboy assumes it's just a rock that looks like Kryptonite and throws it into the Arctic so he won't be fooled by it at some later point.

In Superman #177 things get even more improbable. A plane carrying Clark Kent over the Arctic is about to crash, and the passengers bail out. Clark lands near that same piece of Green K, but manages to escape with a rather cool method:



Improbably, this trip turns out to be the one that convinces Supes to build his Fortress of Solitude, so it's a significant event in the life of the Man of Steel. But this piece of Green K is bound for even more glory, as a professor uses it to create a ray that neutralizes Kryptonite against Superman. Unfortunately it turns out to make the Krytonite deadly for humans.

In the end Superman uses a pair of lead tongs to hurl the chunk into space. But it goes through a red "cloud" in space which turns it into red kryptonite and sends it hurtling back to Earth.

The Red Kryptonite appears in Superman #177. At first Superman can detect no ill effects, but then he discovers that he's unable to speak or write in English, only in Kryptonese. How can he avoid exposing his Clark Kent identity to Lois when he shows up in the newsroom speaking and writing this strange tongue?



Answer: By exposing Krypto to talking dog Red Kryptonite!

The series finally finished in Superman #179. A mysterious ray transforms the Red K, now apparently harmless to Superman (since it only affects him once) into Gold Kryptonite, which will rob him of his powers permanently!

Up till this point the series had been rather silly and pedestrian, but the finale redeemed things a bit. Seening the Red K transmute into Gold K, the Kandorians devised a plan of action. They would send one member of the Superman Emergency Squad (a group of Kandorians who were on call to be tiny, super-powered assistants when needed) to use a Phantom Zone projector to dispose of the dangerous element.

The person would be protected in a lead suit. As it happens, Jay-Ree is chosen, but his girlfriend Joenne insists on accompanying him. While getting rid of the Gold K, they are both briefly exposed to the rays and decide to make their home on Earth for the good of Kandor:



Of course, that's good characterization but awful genetics; acquired characteristics are not handed down to the next generation. This was in an age when nobody was supposed to notice that Superman was of an alien species and quite probably could not breed with Lois. And of course it leaves unanswered the question of just who Jay-Ree and Joenne's children are going to marry.

But despite this obvious glitch, the rest of the story charms, with the little couple doing all sorts of cute stuff. Jimmy Olsen builds them a miniature home inside his pad, and Superman himself presides at their wedding. At the end, Gold Kryptonite threatens to return, but I believe that this was the end of the Tales of Kryptonite.