Welcome to December 1970, where we have finally reached the end of the first year of this not-so-little project, something over a year after I actually began it! Hopefully, we’ll be able to move through the next year a bit more quickly. But first, we’ve got to get there, which means we’ve got one more month of comics to read. Let’s take a look at what was going on in the world back then, shall we?
If you’re new to this little journey, you can check out the first post to learn what it’s all about.
- USA’s Environmental Protection Agency created
- US and USSR perform nuclear tests
- Stanley Cup, Conn Smythe Trophy & Bill Masterson Trophy stolen from NHL hall of fame
- The Dutch Antilles government of Petronia falls
- Soviet Venera 7 is 1st spacecraft to land on another planet (Venus)
- An uprising against Poland’s communist regime fails
- Walt Disney’s Aristocats is released
- Occupational Safety and Health Act (United States) signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon (OSHA arrives)
- Unrest continues in Ireland
- Paul McCartney files a lawsuit to dissolve the Beatles
This is a fairly quite month, at least compared to our last few, though there are dozens of nuclear tests perform that provide mute but eloquent witness to the tensions in the world. Perhaps the event of greatest note is the landing of the first spacecraft on another planet. That was quite an accomplishment, and one I hadn’t heard of before. Of particular interest to this blog, given my propensity for jokes about it, is the advent of OSHA. I suppose now my teasing won’t be anachronistic.
The top song this month was “Tears of a Clown” by Smokey Robinson and The Miracles. You’ve gotta’ love Smokey Robinson!
Roll Call (You can see everything published this month HERE)
- Action Comics #395
- Adventure Comics #400
- Aquaman #54
- Batman #227
- Detective Comics #406
- The Flash #202
- Green Lantern/Green Arrow #81
- Justice League of America #84 (reprints, won’t be covered)
- Justice League of America #85
- The Phantom Stranger #10
- Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #134
- Teen Titans #30
- World’s Finest #199
Bolded entries are covered in this post, the others will be covered soon.
Action Comics #395
“The Secrets of Superman’s Fortress”
Writer: Leo Dorfman
Penciler: Curt Swan
Inker: Murphy Anderson
“The Credit Card of Catastrophe”
Writer: Leo Dorfman
Penciler: Curt Swan
Inker: Murphy Anderson
This is a pretty solid issue, with two enjoyable tales within, and just check out that cover! That’s a striking image, and it certainly piqued my curiosity. The headline tale doesn’t quite live up to the cool cover, but it’s fun enough, with some cool extra treats. It does have one glaring logical problem, though.
This cover story starts with something unexpected, a flashback to Superman’s creation of his Fortress of Solitude! We just get a brief glimpse of him setting the place up, then we are treated to cool two-page spread diagram of the place, which was a pleasant surprise. I’ve mentioned before how much I loved this type of thing as a kid, and I still think it is a nice feature to add to a story, to give readers a spatial sense of a place, fleshing the setting out a bit more fully. The diagram accompanies a visit from Jimmy Olsen, who Superman takes for a tour in thanks for the boy’s assistance on his adventures.
I love what the giant gold key says about Superman
In time, he also brings Lois for a tour, and he shows her his not-at-all creepy hall of Lois dioramas immortalizing her aid in various cases he’s faced. The girl reporter takes this as a charming sign of the Man of Steel’s affection. I think I might be more inclined to take it as a sign of him being a super-stalker, a-la Superman Returns! Anyway, Lois’s questionable sense of romance aside, she also notices a restricted access door and asks the hero about it, but he refuses to answer. After he returns her home, the Metropolis Marvel looks inside the forbidden room and spends some time in melancholy reflection of the artifacts within, a cape and a feather. It’s a nice, moody scene, and readers are really left wondering what could affect Superman so profoundly.
In answer to the burning question on the audience’s minds, Superman puts on a device that will help him recall the experience he has been trying to forget because he just has to see it again. We learn that on a mission in space he spotted a crashed spacecraft on a wild planet and decided to investigate. When he arrived, he discovered a tribe of primitive humans, probably survivors of the ancient shipwreck, who are being hunted by slavers using dogs. The Man of Tomorrow leaps into action, not one to let such injustice pass, and creates a shelter for the panicked savages, and, in a funny scene, he also just lets the dogs chew on him until he weaves a net to hold them.
But his efforts do not go unnoticed, and we meet a group of alien amazons, powerful warrior women who are on the world to mine an element vitally necessary for their race. The commander of the crew, Captain Althera, is quite struck by the heroic conduct and appearance of Kal-El, the ol’ lady killer, and she begins to wonder about where he might have come from. For his part, Superman promises the tribe that he’ll protect them until the slavers leave. The next gambit of the amazons, which involves booby-trapping a fruit tree they visit, is easily defeated when the Man of Steel simply carries the tree away, prisoners and all. Althera’s crew is concerned about her infatuation with the alien, but she attempts to hide her feelings.
The amazons have a very Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon look, which I love.
Later that night, Superman discovers her slipping out of their camp to carve a statue of him, only to smash it in anger at her own feelings. Clearly this chick’s got issues! Like Lois, the hero has perhaps poor judgement about romance, and he finds this strange outburst quite endearing. The kryptonian, long sojourning among frail humanity, is fascinated by this powerful, passionate female alien. Her strength and spirit are intriguing for him, and he begins to wonder if he’s found a woman of iron who could keep up with a Man of Steel. That’s actually a cool angle, and it makes sense that, even though Superman identifies with humanity, there would always be a part of him that would desire the company of beings that were really his equals.
On her way back to cap, the distracted Captain accidentally triggers a deadfall setup by the tribesmen, and though she has the strength to hold it temporarily, the Man of Tomorrow must come to her aid. His intercession moves the warrior woman. She insists that he must be one of her people, and she wants him for her mate! Interestingly, Superman isn’t in too big of a hurry to dissuade her at first, but when her helmet falls off, the feathery plumes covering her head reveal that her people are avian. For some reason, this is a deal breaker, and it is also the on real problem with this story. (It never stopped Captain Kirk!) Superman realizes that they are incompatible, but seeing as he’s the last of his race, that’s true of any other being, including Lois!
In a neat touch, the reason that Althera was convinced the hero was one of her people was because he could fly, which her bird-like race had once been able to do as well. She assumed he was a further evolution. That works pretty well, and it makes the kryptonian’s revelation of his origins an effective turning point for the story.
With Superman’s help, the amazons quickly manage to mine the materials they need, and the two races part in peace, leaving Clark nothing to remember his lovely lady-lark but a single plume from her head.
The whole thing happens too fast to be entirely successful as a tale of lost love, but it’s a fun story, and the Vrandarians have a cool design. There’s a story worth a longer treatment here, with a warrior woman who rebels against her matriarchal culture in the name of love and Superman lured to the stars by the prospect of a partner who could really be his equal, but these promising elements are really only here in embryonic form. Still, it’s an enjoyable enough read, despite Superman’s seeming overreaction to his possible paramour’s plumes and the speed of their romance. I’ll give it an average 3 Minutemen.
“The Credit Card of Catastrophe”
This is a story that I fully expected to be super gimmicky and silly, but, despite the fact that it seems like an utterly conventional ‘overly elaborate but harmless scheme’ story on paper, it actually features a more thoughtful, reasonable resolution than I expected.
The story beings with an off-beat scene, as Superman, for some reason that is never explained, visits a fortune teller named ‘Madame Mephisto’ (apparently the Marvel character is moonlighting at DC!). The Man of Steel is oddly affected by her routine, but he remains skeptical, though he accepts a token from her: a card that is supposed to grant him three wishes, wishes with a secret price.
Later on, the Metropolis Marvel is in disguise as his mild-mannered alter-ego, covering a baseball game (apparently he, like his recent movie counterpart, has the most eclectic beat in newspaper history) when the stands begin to collapse! He rushes to help as Superman, but his powers fail him. In desperation, he wishes to be able to accomplish his usual daring do, and suddenly leaps into action. Afterwards, his card glows mysteriously! One wish down.
The next day, because every day in the DCU is a constant cavalcade of crises, Clark is covering the filming of a movie when something goes wrong. A hot-air balloon threatens the crowd, and once again the Man of Tomorrow’s powers fail him. Once again, his wish saves the day, accompanied by the glowing of his card!
The third day, you guessed it, we get another disaster, an oil platform threatened by an iceberg. One quick wish later and Superman is carving the ‘berg into ice cubes,’ and his third wish is gone. His powers seem to have deserted him permanently, and he sets out to find the mystic who started all of this. She claims to have affected him with her magic and promises to restore his powers, but for a price! Madame Mephisto demands that the hero hand over half the gold in Fort Knox, and Superman faces an interesting moral quandary. If he agrees, he’s committing one heck of a crime and betraying the public trust. If he refuses, there’s no telling how many could suffer and die because he won’t be able to help them. I’m pleased that the rational choice of the greater good is actually the one he takes, displaying a slightly more mature morality than ‘crime=bad’ that usually populates such books.
Yet, when he returns with the gold, he gives it to the fortune teller in an unexpected fashion, dumping the heavy bullion right on her head! I was sufficiently taken aback by this twist, thinking, ‘that would kill her!’ Here’s where the story impressed me and proved itself to be more than I expected. Superman digs the buried clairvoyant out, only to unmask her as…Supergirl! This is where the cliche comic story would generally provide a paper-thin excuse, which this one certainly has, but it also has a surprisingly well thought-out resolution. Supergirl attended a lecture on hypnotism and was curious if she or Clark could be conned into doing something against their will, so she wildly unethically decided to experiment on her cousin without his knowledge or consent.
She hypnotized him into believing his powers were gone and that the card could restore them; then she followed him to ensure that nothing really went wrong. The fun bit is that Superman reasoned it out in a believable fashion, without ridiculous jumps in logic. He realized that in each challenge he faced, he wasn’t hurt, despite his powers supposedly having been cancelled. He recognized that only his voluntary powers were affected, making it unlikely that magic was the cause, which is quite clever and reasonable. When the Maid of Might restored his powers in order to get the gold, he spied on her with X-Ray vision and sussed out enough of the rest to turn the tables on her. Supergirl complains that he ruined her experiment, so they’ll never know if they can actually be controlled through hypnotism, which, of course, is magic in comics.
This is a fun and curious little story, surprising in that the contrived plot is actually given enough thought to make it work out in the end. Supergirl’s experiment seems unnecessary, and I think I’d be more than a little annoyed at being used as a guinea pig if I were Superman, but, let’s face it: he’s probably done worse things to her. I’ll give this simple and gimmicky but enjoyable story 3 Minutemen.
The letter column for this issue includes a funny missive to the sour-grapes writers who voiced complaints about the same names constantly showing up in the letter feature as certain epistlers got their dispatches picked fairly often. The letter included a hilarious and very clever little poem which I found worth sharing with y’all:
A pox on Martin Pasko,
A plague on Irene V.
And fie to all the other fans
More fortunate than me!Thus readers rant a million ways
O’er fruitless hours of writing praise
In deathless prose and deathless verse,
At times verbose and sometimes terse.Suppose the reader knocks the tale
And says the artwork was too stale?
Or if not, what else might be wrong–
Was the story too short? Or too long?Yes, that just might be the key
To critical success for me!
And so, once more, to pen and paper
To criticize each startling caper
Of daring men and super-creatures,
Aliens, spirits, other features.But hapless writers, don’t lose heart
If the pearls of wisdom you’d impart
Are deemed too dull by guys and dolls
Who cull comments for lettercols.
No hard names should you others call:
Patience and work will conquer all.Better luck next time.
Isn’t that clever?
Adventure Comics #400
“Return of the Black Flame”
Writer: Mike Sekowsky
Penciler: Mike Sekowsky
Inker: Jack Abel
Letterer: John Costanza
Editor: Mike Sekowsky
We’ve got a milestone for Adventure Comics here in issue number 400, and to celebrate, Mike Sekowsky, who is wearing three different hats in this issue, arranges a return engagement for a Supergirl villain. I didn’t even know she had any villains! The femme fatale of our tale turns out to be the Black Flame, a Silver Age character I’d never heard of. Apparently, she’s a rogue from the Bottle City of Kandor, which is a pretty neat idea, honestly. In one of her previous encounters with the Maid of Might, she was stripped of her powers with gold kryptonite, which is apt to make one a bit cranky. I was pretty thrilled to find a tale with an actual supervillain, as those have been few and far between in our comics this year. The story itself is fun, if a bit goofy. Apparently Sekowsky thought that the Black Flame’s triumphant return wasn’t enough to mark the 400th issue, so he introduced three more bad guys, putting the heroine up against a fitting four antagonists. The trouble is, whereas the Flame is an established villainess with a kryptonian pedigree, her three associates are one-shot opponents who don’t make any sense in this setting.
We join the Maid of Might as she repairs her super-suit (apparently, she doesn’t have an Edna Mode on call). She’s enjoying a classic black and white film (a girl after my own heart), so she catches a strange news broadcast that follows the flick. The station received an unusual note, a public appeal to Supergirl for help, including a hidden phone number that only her super senses can detect. Intrigued, Kara decides to investigate. A call leads her to a mysterious rendezvous that is definitely not a trap.
Meanwhile, at the trap…err…rendezvous, a quirky quartet are gathered together, watching her progress. They include the tall, spindly figure of ‘The Inventor,’ the green-clad leprechaun, ‘L. Finn,’ and the portly presence of ‘the Toymaster.’ Now, that’s ToyMASTER, not ToyMAN. He’s totally different and original and not at all a ripoff. Shut up! Toyman is a well-known DC villain. Toymaster has, I’m fairly certain, never appeared again. Why Sekowsky didn’t use the existing villain, who already had a grudge against Superman and his friends, I’ll never know. Anyway, this very motley and unimpressive assortment are lead by the costumed Black Flame, who has a pretty cool look, though it really doesn’t scream ‘black’ or ‘flame.’ She obligingly gives us a flashback to her escape from prison, which is pretty neat. She slowly assembled odds and ends until she could build a one-shot stun ray, which she used to zap a guard and get his gun. Then she staged a daring breakout of her kandorian prison, blasting her way to a ship.
Oddly, she takes that ship to the Phantom Zone, as if it were a planet to which you could just fly. My knowledge of the Silver Age Superman mythos is a tad spotty, but I’m pretty sure that even then it was firmly established that the Zone was a separate dimension you had to have special equipment to access. That was more or less the whole point. I hope a reader will correct me if I’m wrong, but I’m inclined to put this down to Sekowsky’s confusion, especially considering what happens next. The fiendish flame wants to recruit some fellow villains. So, who does she carry away from the Phantom Zone? Perhaps General Zod, Jax Ur, or another famous kryptonian criminal? Perhaps some new and exciting foes from Krypton-that-was? No! She calls the three goofballs we met before, who just seem to be earthlings. How in the world did they end up in the Phantom Zone?!
Well, their inexplicable origins aside, the narrative returns to the present, where Supergirl strolls into the eerie old house that is definitely not a trap. Once inside, she’s ambushed by a robot maid with a lasso coated in kryptonite dust. She destroys the automaton, but she begins to succumbs to the effect of the poisonous element. Suddenly, Streaky, little cape and all, arrives, ignoring her pleas for help and coating her with more kryptonite dust! It turns out that this is another robot, controlled by the Toymaster, and the embattled heroine beheads it with a blow, passing out from the effort.
Robo-Streaky, no!
The Maid of Might awakens in a strange setting, tied up with kryptonite coated bonds and posed as a ten-pin in an oversized bowling alley. The quartet of criminals have a supply of kryptonite bowling balls, and they take turns rolling for a deadly strike. That’s right, we’re in classic villainous death trap territory here. The whole setup is pretty silly, but I’m willing to give it a pass considering how central a part of the genre this kind of thing is. I’ll admit, it’s weird and unique enough to be entertaining.
With each strike, Supergirl grows weaker, but she also realizes that the impacts are knocking the kryptonite off of her bonds, so she recovers between rounds. Finally, she is strong enough to break free, and she puts her foes on their heels until L. Finn hits her with a blast of magic, knocking her out once more. It is revealed, to literally no-one’s surprise, that the fellow dressed as a leprechaun is, in fact, a leprechaun!
Once more, the Maid of Might awakens in a death trap. Twice in one issue is pushing things a bit, even in a comic book! Genre conventions be darned, the Black Flame is going to have her overly-elaborate revenge, even embracing the classic villain mistake, and leaving the heroine to her fate, confident that there is no way she can escape. To be fair, things do look grim for Supergirl. She’s bound in a pile of gold kryptonite dust (one wonders where the Flame got all this stuff!), with a giant kryptonite harpoon pointed at her chest. Now, once again, I’m going to plead foul. Doesn’t gold kryptonite remove powers pretty quickly? I didn’t think it was a slow process. What’s more, aren’t the effects of the gold variety irreversible? Didn’t we just see that a few months ago in a Superman story? Then again, I suppose green kryptonite doesn’t accomplish its effect all at once. I suspect that I’m giving this more thought than Sekowsky did. Still, I’m inclined to call shenanigans.
Inconsistent alien minerals aside, the situation looks dire for our heroine, but she escapes in a cute and moderately clever sequence. It does depend entirely on the incompetence of the Toymaster, though. He left his toys and his control box right next to her prison, within convenient reach. I can’t help but think that the Flame would have been better off going for the name-brand villains rather than these generic knock-offs. Toyman would never have made such a rookie mistake. I suppose you get what you pay for.
Either way, the Girl of Steel discovers that she can control these little automatons telepathically, and she orders them to free her. They make for an entertaining and charming little robot army. She turns their adorable ire on her captors, and they make quick work of the villainous team, enabling Supergirl herself to put the Black Flame out of action. I have to say, I just love the scene of the toys descending on the villains. That’s so silly and yet so fun that it really captures the joyful absurdity of a superheroic world.
This is a fun enough story, but it really does have some weak points. The random earth-villains randomly being in the Phantom Zone is odd by itself, and the double death trap dilemma is a bit much. I would have liked to see more of the Black Flame, as she piqued my curiosity. Unfortunately, after her escape, all she really did was give orders to her evil associates. I suppose I’ll give this flawed issue 2.5 Minutemen. as its faults slightly outweigh its enjoyability, but the adorable antics of the animate toys make me smile.
That covers our first post on December of 1970. I hope you enjoyed it and will join me again soon for our next few issues. They promise to be an interesting pair! Until next time, keep the heroic ideal alive!
The Greylands 