Trivia Quiz #38: Jor-El

These should be fairly tough:

1. Which of Jor-El's official duties did he hate?

2. When the young Jor-El was cramming for his exams, what trick did he use to maximize his study time?

3. What invention of Jor-El's led to him being elected to the Science Council?

4. Jor-El was stuck in the Phantom Zone twice when the projector failed to bring him back. What two people repaired the projector on those separate occasions?

5. When Jor-El first got married, where did he work?

Giant Superboy Is Watching You!

That is strange on many levels. Who wound the key after Superboy moved to Metropolis? Was Smallville's main drag so small that it was effectively alternating one-way? Was there another giant Superboy statue at the other end of town?

Around the Horn With Some Contributions

Superman Fan has been doing a series of posts on the Greatest Imaginary Story You've Never Seen (Part I and Part II). Actually, I have seen it; I have a coverless copy in my collection. It is a very cool story in which Jor-El and Lara escape to Earth with baby Kal-El when Lara (surprise) gets the brilliant idea of enlarging the test rocket ship with a ray she's been working on.

The rest of the story is kind of a Jor-El Ex Machina; with Superman's father solving all of the problems that his son would face in the "real" stories. Lex Luthor goes bald? Not with Papa El's magical hair restoring ray. Mxyzptlk creating constant annoyances? Jor erects a shield preventing him from entering our dimension. Kandor stuck in miniature? Jor-El rebuilds Lara's enlarging ray. Superboy in love with Lori Lemaris, the mermaid? Daddy gives her a pair of legs. But amusingly, when Superboy first encounters Kryptonite, Jor-El has a senior moment:

Yes, don't lift my son who probably weighs 150 pounds, instead drag that several-ton boulder of Kryptonite! Of course, after that he designs a Kryptonite disintegrator, so his reputation as a super-genius remains intact.

So far Osgood hasn't covered the final part of the story, but I will mention that it's another one of those endings where the inexorable nature of fate is once again highlighted.

Over at the Comic Treadmill, Mag notes the futility of Captain Boomerang attempting to send the Flash on a boomerang to the Moon; surely it would just return? What I find amusing, however, is that in each of Captain Boomerang's first three appearances, he had essentially the same deathtrap for the Flash. In Flash #117:

You can see that's not substantially different from the setting in Flash #124. Ditto with Flash #148:

Incidentally, in that last story, the Flash escapes by grabbing hold of the flag atop Mount Everest:

Bill Jourdain appeared on Comic Geek Speak to discuss the early days of DC comics (from about 1935-1947). Bill's always worth a listen due to his vast knowledge of Golden Age Comics.

The House of Cobwebs analyzes the horror that was Freddy, Charlton's attempted knock-off of Archie Comics. The post is much more entertaining and humorous than the actual Freddy Comics. I'll have to dig around and see if I can pull up an issue of that comic for a review.

This Looks Like a Job for... Superman!

Mort Weisinger's Superman: Key Dates and Issues

I have written about this previously, but sometime in 1958 Mort Weisinger and his writers and artists set about creating the character that would come to be known as the Silver Age Superman. It was an era of tremendous creativity, that saw many terrific stories and innovations. Here are some of the most important:

April 1958: Adventure #247 introduces the Legion of Super-Heroes.
July 1958: Action #242 introduces the Silver Age Fortress of Solitude..
September 1958: Action #244 introduces Brainiac and the bottle city of Kandor.
October 1958: Superboy #68 introduces the teen-aged Bizarro.
December 1958: Adventure #255 introduces Red Kryptonite.
February 1959: Superman #127 introduces Titano, the Super-Ape.
April 1959: Jimmy Olsen #37 introduces Lucy Lane.
May 1959: Action #252 introduces Supergirl (Kara Zor-El); Superman #129 introduces Lori Lemaris and Atlantis.
July 1959: Action #254 introduces adult Bizarro.
August 1959: Superman #131 introduces Mr Mxyzptlk (Silver Age version).
April 1960: Adventure #271 introduces the teen-aged Lex Luthor, and establishes the motivation for his hatred of Superboy/Superman.
January 1961: Superboy #86 introduces Pete Ross.
April 1961: Adventure #283 introduces the Phantom Zone.
June 1961: Superboy #89 introduces Mon-El. (Corrected the intro of the Fortress and Brainiac/Kandor).

When I'm the Evil Genius

I will not leave my enemies their free will:


Prior Entries in the "When I'm the Evil Genius" Series.

Action #314

This is one of the few Action issues from around this era that I didn't have in my collection until recently, and all I can say is, good Lord, I didn't know what I was missing. It starts with Aquaman and a few other JLA members signaling Superman to visit them on a remote island, where we learn:

Of course, Jor-El sent dozens of such messages to Superman during the Silver Age; indeed it would be a chore to catalog them all. At any rate, Jor-El wants to tell his son how Earth was chosen for his new home. It turned out that there were six possible worlds he could be sent to. Fortunately, one of Jor-El's friend has a future predictor:

It turns out that on the first world of Xann, he would be tiny compared to the other inhabitants, although he would retain his super-powers. Jor-El decides not to send him to Xann, because there he'd have nobody to marry. The second world, Valair, has no land, only water, and Kal-El's unhappy living his life under the seas. The third world has a red sun, so Kal would not have any super-powers there, but he does learn to compensate:

But he finds that some of the natives want to use his arrow-inventions for evil and leaves society to live on his own. Obviously that world is out. On the next one, it's always night and Kal-El takes on a lawman role:

On the penultimate world, Superman's adoptive father invents a ray that would give him super-speed, but the scene shown on the cover occurs when he gets a little too enthusiastic about trying out his powers. So Earth it is:

Comments: A silly story, obviously set up to deliver that surprise at the end where we realize that Superman would have been a one-man JLA. It does leave me feeling a little sad that he didn't end up getting sent to the planet of Amazonia, where he could have become Wonder Woman with the aid of a gender-transforming ray invented by his adoptive mom. ;)

But it is in the Supergirl story that things really get wacky. Remember, when Supergirl originally arrived on Earth, her parents had supposedly died when meteors struck Argo City. However, in Action #309, it was revealed that they had survived by beaming themselves into the Survival Zone, a dimension much like the Phantom Zone. Zor-El and Allura decided that they wanted to live among their fellow Kryptonians in the bottle city of Kandor, while Supergirl remained on Earth with the Danvers. However, all was not well:

As you can probably guess, she's heart-sick for her daughter, who never visits, never calls. Then one day:

So you can see she's gone completely mentally unstable. The authorities take back the android, without apparently considering that maybe, just maybe, they could make a similar doll for Allura that would ease her pain. They decide to contact Supergirl, but as it happens, she's out and the Danvers receive the call. Realizing that Allura's health is more important than their love for their adopted daughter, they decide to, wait for it, practice mental cruelty on Supergirl so that she will rejoin her natural parents. No, I'm not kidding:



But eventually Kara overhears the Danvers tearfully discussing how hard it is to be so mean to their daughter and discovers the reason why they've been treating her badly. She visits Kandor and suggests that she should stay their permanently, but apparently Mom realizes Earth needs its Supergirl. The only solution is for the Danvers to move to Kandor while the exchange ray brings out Zor-El and Allura. At first this looks like a great solution, as Supergirl's parents can join her in protecting Earth. But what of the Danvers?

The Chief Healer comes up with a solution:

The story ends as a cliff-hanger; will Supergirl's parents be happy on Earth? Can the Danvers find love in their heart for Dar-Lin?

Comments: Wow, what a wild story. I confess that I always enjoy these psychological dramas more than the run-of-the-mill secret identity stories, but this tale was completely wacked-out.

Reach For Happiness

In March 1966, DC started a serialized story in their Secret Hearts romance comic. The story is set in Danville Corners, a small town somewhere in the US, with plenty of intertwined lives and romances. We initially see the town through the eyes of Karen Wilder, who is returning after a tragic end to a two-year marriage to a Hollywood movie star:

As you can probably guess, the curve was "deadman's curve" and Frankie bought the farm.

We get occasional glimpses in that first episode of how complicated the various relationships are. Karen's sister, Peggy, is bitter over something to do with their mother. A friendly older couple (Lila and Roger), blame Lila's rich but irresponsible father for their son's youthful wildness. Karen had formerly been engaged to the young local doctor (Greg Marsh), but now he's involved with Rita, who'd previously been engaged to Ray Silva, a ne'er-do-well nightclub operator.

The story ran for an amazing 29 issues. When you consider that each installment was probably 15 pages or so, the story becomes easily DC's longest in the 1960s. The earliest issues were illustrated by Gene Colan, so the art is definitely a treat. And the characters are complex. For example, Rita comes off as a bitch in the first issue:

But in the second issue we get a deeper feel for her character:

She grew up on "the wrong side of the tracks" and so she's always felt inferior. She may not be a "good" girl, but she's not a cardboard cutout villainess, either.

Over the course of the first five issues (the only ones I've been able to read so far) we see just how interconnected everybody is in the story. Ray Silva owes his success to Lila's wealthy father, who does indeed seem to be spoiling his grandson. Rita's success is as a singer, and it only came about because Ray gave her a chance to sing at his club. As the five issues come to a close, Rita demands that Greg marry her or lose her forever, and he makes his decision:

Comments: Excellent opening to this series, with complex characters and terrific art (although Colan apparently left for Marvel by Secret Hearts #114, as he did only the cover and splash for that issue). Yes, the story follows all the soap opera tropes, with tears coming more often than kisses. But that's the nature of the genre, and I heartily recommend the early issues of this series as worth the read.

Little Lulu #129

Little Lulu was the creation of Marjorie Henderson Buell (generally abbreviated to Marge). She appeared in the Saturday Evening Post in single panel comics for over a decade. Later she got her own newspaper strip and eventually made it into the comics for Dell, which specialized in licensed characters.

Dell hired John Stanley to produce the comics as both writer and artist. (Correction: As pointed out in the comments by Jonathan L. Miller, Stanley did the scripts and layouts only after the first few issues.) The result was one of the consistently funniest and entertaining books on the market. Along with Dennis the Menace and Richie Rich, Little Lulu was among the most successful comic book series featuring children ever; it was far more successful in that market than Charles Schultz's Peanuts.

Part of the charm of the series lies in the two main characters. Little Lulu is (generally) the leader of the girls in her hometown, while Tubby, her sometimes friend and sometimes antagonist, bosses the boys.

The opening story concerns the boys' clubhouse, which proudly declares "No Girls Allowed". Tubby and his pals have finally saved up enough money to put a lock on the door. However, the window poses a problem and:

Meanwhile, the girls are busy:

The boys pelt the girls with their snowballs, and later play an even worse trick:

The girls chase the boys, but the lads lock themselves in the clubhouse. However this doesn't work out that well:

And with the window boarded up, the boys have a lot of hard work ahead of them to escape.

The second story is about Lulu getting a present. Somehow she convinces herself that the present is going to be a giant playhouse that she and her girlfriends can have a tea party in. When it turns out that the actual gift is a piano, she's initially disappointed, but she's resourceful with the crate the piano came in:

The next three stories get into some of the continuing features in Little Lulu. In "Wet Mumday", the boys have one Monday a month where they refuse to talk to any of the girls, or even acknowledge their existence. This drives Lulu and her French friend Fifi crazy, to the point where they adopt desperate measures:

But while the old man may be turned on the boys are made of sterner stuff:

So the girls climb up a drainpipe and get into the house through the second floor, but they accidentally fall into the bathtub:

However, the boys have broken their vows not to talk to the girls, so they're all going to have to be sworn back into the club at some later date. Note: the Mumday thing featured in several Little Lulu stories.

The fourth story features an even more common theme. Lulu is pestered by little Alvin, who wants some money to buy a bottle of perfume for his mother. So Lulu tells him a story explaining why he shouldn't buy the cheap perfume. These stories were always quite elaborate, and at least in the 1950s often featured "a poor little girl" (played by Lulu) and an ugly crone called Witch Hazel. In the story, the poor little girl wants to buy her mother a bottle of perfume, but she can't find a way to earn money. Finally she meets Witch Hazel, who offers to pay the 79 cents she needs if Lulu will just wash all her windows:

When the witch asks Lulu why she needs the money, the poor little girl talks about the perfume sale going on that day only. So the witch heads out to buy some perfume for herself, but refuses to do the same for Lulu until the job is done, although she does leave the money for the job behind. Since the sale only lasts that day, Lulu grabs the money and heads downtown, but she runs into another witch, named Little Itch, who offers to make free perfume for her:

But Little Itch absconds with the money, and thus Lulu has no choice but to go back to Witch Hazel's house and finish washing the windows. Fortunately Witch Hazel returns, smells the bad perfume created by Little Itch, and, thinking it's the bottle she just bought, gives Lulu the good perfume. Alvin has learned his lesson:

The final story features Tubby and the Little Men from Mars. These were also continuing characters, and quite a common type in late 1950s pop culture, as I have discussed elsewhere. Tubby discovers a large dog, who rescued his little buddies from the Red Planet. But his mom won't let him keep the animal, and so he tries to sell it. At first he has no success, but then the Little Men convince Wilbur Van Snobbe (the rich kid) that the dog can talk:

But when it turns out that the dog can't talk, Van Snobbe drops it back at Tubby's doorstep. The Martians have a solution, however; they miniaturize the dog and adopt him as their pet. Tubby's mom comes in just as they fly away:

Probably another reference to Laika, the dog that the Russians put in space in 1957.

Around the Horn

Collectors Weekly has a terrific interview with Greg Theakston regarding Golden Age Comics in general. I found this quirky aside fascinating:

You also had Captain Marvel and Captain Marvel Jr., who was Elvis’ favorite comic book hero. You know the emblem with Elvis’ motto, “Taking Care of Business” with the lightning bolt? Captain Marvel Jr. had a lightning bolt on his chest, plus a little Elvis-like curl of hair in the middle of his forehead. Elvis wore the jumpsuits with the high collar; Captain Marvel Jr. had a high collar. So while Jr. may not be as widely known as Captain Marvel himself, he had a profound effect on Elvis Presley.

Well worth the read. More fascinating discussion of DC's Golden Age era at Bill Jourdain's site in a podcast with the Comic Geek Speak guys.

Out of This World posts the entire Jackie Johnson story from Our Army At War #160. You may recall that I reviewed that issue back in January.

While we're on the topic of Our Army At War, Mykal posted the entirety of Our Army At War #120, featuring a pair of excellent stories including the origins of the Ice Cream Soldier, Wild Man, and Bulldozer. But it is the other story in that issue, a one-off tale featuring the Saucy Lady that really won my heart.

All's fair in Love and War, right? Jacque Nodell recently hosted a comics chatcast on the topic of Romance Comics, while Aaron from Silver Age Gold hosted one on his favorite comics. They are scheduled again on March 15 (Aaron) and March 16 (Jacque) at 8:00 PM eastern time, and this time I promise to remember to attend Aaron's.

Adventure #280

This story is symptomatic of one of the major problems with Superboy in the Silver Age. Characters that had been introduced in the Superman books often ended up appearing in Superboy, even though that appearance contradicted the Superman tales. Lex Luthor, who for years had bedeviled the Man of Tomorrow, turned out to have been the best friend (however briefly) of the Boy of Steel. Lois Lane and Mr Mxyptlk also appeared in the Superboy chronicles, so it was perhaps inevitable that Lori Lemaris would also pop up in Smallville eventually. Never mind that we had been assured in her first Superman story that she was a girlfriend of his during his college years at Metropolis U.

The story itself is a classically zany Silver Age tale. Superboy decides to help out a local "aquarium" (really an aquatic zoo) owner by bringing him terrific attractions like electric eels, sharks and a giant whale. Lori and her friends observe this from under the sea, and Lori lies a bit shamelessly:

It turns out that Lori is bored with Atlantis. BTW, those who think that there wasn't an explanation for the Lori Lemaris Atlanteans and the Aquaman contingent are wrong:

Lori decides to get Superboy to "rescue" her from a floating mine. When he does, she again indulges herself in a whopper:

But she trips herself up with a bit of "proof":

Of course, this was something of a cliche in the Silver Age; since BC means "Before Christ", nobody would have dated a coin 450 BC; that was the year applied after the birth of Jesus became considered a dividing point.

Lori explains that she wants to live outside the water, as a normal girl, and believes that Superboy will be able to accomplish this. He sets up the experiment, but Lana comes along:

The experiment will take 24 hours, during which time Superboy is away on a space mission. Lori is so confident the procedure will work, that she gets out of the water and drains it off. Bad move:

Say what? Smallville only a mile from the ocean? I guess we can rule out Kansas as the location of Superboy's hometown. Fortunately, Lana remembers that there's a pool inside the cave, and it turns out that the experiment was not to let her live on the land, but:

Still, how do we get to where Superboy and Lori have no memory of ever meeting before their college days? Lori's father goes to work:

Yep, he hypnotizes Superboy, Lori, and Lana into having no memory of the incident.

Comments: It's pretty obvious why this story has never been reprinted (as far as I know). The details are weird, the hypnotism bit makes little sense (except to get Weisinger out of the problem of explaining why the story contradicted Lori's first Superman appearance), and Lori's compulsive lying puts her in a bad light. On the other hand, there is a rare good bit of characterization for Lana Lang, as she saves Lori's life despite fearing that Superboy will prefer the mermaid.

The Congo Bill/Congorilla tale is a fairly pedestrian tale. Congo Bill is hit on the head, and when he changes into Congorilla, he does some oddball things, changing into characters from a nursery rhyme:

Rich man, poor man, beggarman, thief,
Doctor, lawyer, Indian chief.

The story was dusted off and reused a few years later in a Superman story in Action Comics.

The Aquaman story features Aquaman and Aqualad helping out with the TV show, Sea Chase. This is a reference to a popular syndicated TV show of the times called Sea Hunt, starring Lloyd Bridges and two of his sons, Jeff and Beau Bridges.

Update: Commenter Osgood Peabody points out that the story has just recently been reprinted in this volume:

Fantastic Four Fridays: Crossover Central

One of the keys to Marvel's success in the Silver Age was the relentless use of crossover stories to introduce the readers of one Marvel mag to characters in other titles. This story marks the very beginning of that trend.

Ben and Alicia are leaving a performance at the symphony, when Ben's appearance attracts the attention of some soldiers, who suspect he's the Hulk:

After the confusion is resolved, Ben learns that Thunderbolt Ross (the Hulk's nemesis) is requesting the aid of the FF to capture old Greenskin. There's a cute little sight gag:

After the boys brag about how they'd defeat the Hulk, we get another taste of Sue's inferiority complex:

The Hulk is suspected of destroying a secret project in the Southwest. But Bruce Banner believes that the actual culprit is the Wrecker. It turns out that the secret project was an early version of "Star Wars"; a plan to safeguard cities from nuclear attack:

Banner's assistant, Karl Kort, drops his wallet, which conveniently contains a membership card in a "subversive communist front organization". Thus the Wrecker's identity is revealed to Rick Jones. Before he can tell the others, Kort kidnaps him. He leaves a note for Banner telling him to get rid of the FF or he'll never see Rick alive again. So Bruce decides to turn himself into the Hulk again. Remember, this is during the era where Stan and Jack were still experimenting with the Hulk's transformations; at one point it was voluntary, at another it was brought on by nightfall. It was only later that they hit on the idea that stress caused Banner to change.

A little later all three groups are in an underground cave. The first meeting of the FF and the Hulk:

Note as well that the Hulk's vocabulary is a little more extensive than the "Hulk smash!" character of the later 1960s.

There are several pages of the FF mixing it up with the Hulk, when suddenly a beam weapon incapacitates the behemoth. The Thing, angry that his battle was cut short, discovers the culprit: a giant robot controlled by the Wrecker. He makes short work of the robot and the team confronts Karl Kort, who has one last card to play:

But as you can probably guess from that panel, Sue proves useful for more than just morale-boosting. The Hulk gets away.

Comments: Obviously a hugely significant issue in terms of a preview of things to come in the Marvel line. One oddity; the crossover came too late to save the Hulk's own magazine, which saw its final issue come out that same month (March 1963). Incidentally, there was another FF crossover in Amazing Spiderman #1, which also had a 3/63 cover date.