Welcome Internet travelers, to my examination of the highs, the lows, the greats, the not so greats, and everything in between of DC Comics in the Bronze Age! Today we’ve got a widely diverse pair of books with a quartet of quirky stories to quicken your pulses! Check them out below!
If you’re new to this little journey, you can check out the first post to learn what it’s all about.
Roll Call
(You can see everything published this month HERE)
- Action Comics #399
- Adventure Comics #405
- Aquaman #56 / (Sub-Mariner #72)
- Detective Comics #410
- The Flash #205 (Reprints, won’t be covered)
- Mr Miracle #1
- The Phantom Stranger #12
- Superboy #173
- Superman’s Girlfriend, Lois Lane #109
- Superman’s Pal, Jimmy Olsen #137
- Superman #236
- Teen Titans #32
Bolded entries are covered in this post, the others will be covered soon.
The Phantom Stranger #12
“Marry Me – Marry Death!”
Writer: Robert Kanigher
Penciler: Jim Aparo
Inker: Jim Aparo
Letterer: Jim Aparo
Editor: Joe Orlando
Cover Artist: Neal Adams
“A Time to Die”
Writer: Jack Oleck
Penciler: Tony DeZuniga
Inker: Tony DeZuniga
Editor: Joe Orlando
We’ve got another beautiful, dramatic, and striking cover courtesy of Neal Adams this month. It’s a nice, spooky image, and it’s well suited to the headline tale within. Indeed, this month our Phantom Stranger story is rather different than what we’ve encountered of late. Instead of focusing on the mystical heroics of the Stranger himself, this comic flips the script, and we see the story from quite a different perspective.
In many ways, this is a classic horror story, and it begins shortly after the wedding of Jason Phillips to his new bride, Wanda. He brings the blushing beauty to his mansion, where he suddenly spots a mysterious figure, the Phantom Stranger, but the next moment there is no-one there. Strange indeed! Recovering, he introduces his new wife and their guests to his old wife, or rather, her coffin!
Well, this seems perfectly normal and healthy…
He explains to the shocked well-wishers that he met and romanced the older and very wealthy Irina when he was a ski instructor. He discovered that she took nitro pills for a weak heart, and despite the fact that she felt she was too old and weak for him, he insisted on marrying her. A few years later, she passed away, but not before making him swear to keep her with him, always.
There’s a very strange bit where she collected ancient Egyptian artifacts and learned about their embalming practices, insisting that they be used on her, but that doesn’t really feature in the story (something of an unfired Chekhov’s Gun…or at least an un-awakened Kanigher’s Mummy.) Irina also left a clause in her will that all of her money would go to charity unless Jason kept her body with him always, which is pretty darn weird. Throughout the tale, Jason paints himself as the perfect grieving husband, but there is something strange about the whole story. This ominous note is strengthened when Jason once again sees the Stranger and begins to scream at him, only to have the figure vanish once more.
That night, the re-married millionaire awakens in the night to hear a creaking sound and investigates to see the cloaked shape of the Stranger standing by the the coffin as it is slowly opening. A voice tells him that he knows why they are here, but yet again, things are not as they seem, and when Wanda comes to investigate her husband’s shouts, the coffin is still locked.
Suddenly, Jason sees Irina outside in a flash of lightning, along with the Supernatural Sleuth, who repeats his message. The maddened millionaire strikes him, sending the cloaked form flying off of the balcony, but once again, Wanda sees nothing. The next day as they are boating on a lake, the Stranger emerges from the waters. Still, Wanda sees nothing. She pleads with her husband to get rid of the coffin, but he refuses, citing his vow, yet even during their intimate moment of conversation, he sees Irina.
Finally, pushed to the breaking point, he confronts the Phantom Stranger over his first wife’s coffin and attacks him with an axe, but the mysterious one forces him to think back over what really happened to his wife. We learn that Phillips tried to kill her, putting her in situations where her heart would give out, and when it finally did, he destroyed her pills and callously sat by and watched her die.
Jason thinks that the Stranger is just a blackmailer and attacks, but as his wild swings carry him outside, he runs towards a pair of advancing lights, only to be struck by a car and killed. Fittingly, the car had come to get his wife’s coffin, though strangely, the name on the work order is Irina, not Wanda.
This is a great little horror yarn, and though that isn’t really my favorite genre, Kanigher turned out a very entertaining tale here, continuing his inconsistency. It’s either feast of famine with this guy! He handled the building tension and mounting clues quite well. There are just a few incongruous elements, like the Egyptian bit and the detail at the end with the conflated names. I’m not really sure what the purpose of that was. Still, the total effect is quite strong. Needless to say, Aparo does a masterful job with this book. His work is wonderfully moody and atmospheric. Every panel is draped in shadow or lit with the bright light of romance, and all of the characters are beautifully rendered. As much as I love his Aquaman work, let’s face it, he was even more perfect for the Phantom Stranger than for the Sea King. All together, I’ll give this chilling chronicle 4.5 Minutemen.
“A Time to Die”
We have a solo Dr. Thirteen backup this month, and it’s a rather nice change of pace. I like the interplay between the good Doctor and the Phantom Stranger, but a little goes a long way. It is good to give each of them room to grow. This particular outing is a respectable Dr. Thirteen mystery set in England, on the misty moors. The Doc and his wife arrive just in time to see a man drop dead at the stroke of midnight. ‘Ol Terry is his usual charming self, talking down to his wife and immediately making friends with the natives. When the townspeople start talking about “the ghost of the Black Friar,” the Dr. responds by saying “You men are acting like frightened fools.” Astonishingly, this does not endear him to them, and they tell this rude American to butt out in no uncertain terms as they carry the body to the town doctor.
Incidentally, that is who summoned Dr. Thirteen in the first place. When they visit this fellow, Dr. Hall, he tells them that he’s a man of science, yet he has spent much time investigating the ruins of the old abbey and believes that there is something evil there. He tells them the tale of one of the abbey’s former inhabitants who turned to the black arts until he was convicted of witchcraft and burned in the 16th century. Before he died, he swore a curse on the town. Dr. Hall reveals that, since he is an old man, he’ll shortly be replaced by a new young doctor, but before he retired, he wanted to see that the town was protected.
That night, Dr. Thirteen investigates, only to see the figure of the Black Friar but be unable to catch him when he vanished. Summoning the townspeople, they scoff, telling him that another man just died on the other side of town and the Friar couldn’t be in two places at once…if he weren’t a ghost! With Dr. Hall’s help, the Ghost Breaker manages to convince the townspeople to help his investigation, but the next night, when they approach the abbey, a disembodied voice declares that, unless they run the strangers out of town, the ghost will take a terrible vengeance no them. The townsfolk tell Thirteen to hit the road, Jack, and don’t come back no more!
Yet, Dr. Thirteen is nothing if not persistent, so he sneaks back into town after sending his wife to safety, and searches a house and the abbey ruins. Soon, he confronts the townspeople just at midnight and entreats them to follow him. Heading to the graveyard where he first encountered the Friar, they once more hear the voice, but the Ghost Breaker leaps forward and searches a tombstone for a hidden switch, revealing a secret passage and a robbed figure! The figure is unmasked to reveal….Doctor Hall!?
That’s right, apparently Hall was just a tad bitter about being forced into retirement, so he used his scientific knowledge to construct a sonic weapon (fancy!), which he hooked up to the bell tower. Every night at midnight it would send out a sonic pulse, and if anyone was close enough and susceptible enough, it would kill them. Thirteen was suspicious of the old fellow, and when he searched his house, he found enough evidence to let him trap the doctor the the help of a micro transmitter that he used to track the fake fiend to his hiding place. That wraps things up rather neatly, if making it a tad Scooby Doo.
This is a decent little backup strip for Dr. Thirteen, if not one of his best. Hall’s scheme is a bit too outlandish and the resolution is rushed, packed into one page, but that’s to be expected when you’ve only got seven to work with in the first place. Both of the creators are new to me, but they turned in a perfectly serviceable story. We’ll see if they show up in future DC Comics. Either way, this yarn earns 3 Minutemen, a solid if unremarkable story.
This issue also had a really excellent missive in the letter column, a thoughtful and insightful take on what makes Dr. Thirteen tick which is worth a read.
Superboy #173
“The Super-Clark of Smallville!”
Writer: Leo Dorfman
Penciler: Bob Brown
Inker: Dick Giordano
“Trust Me or Kill Me!”
Writer: Cary Bates
Penciler: George Tuska
Inker: George Tuska
Well, would you look at that! It’s the totally original ‘hero acting out of character’ cover type! The cover is probably enough to make you want to know what’s going on, and it’s decently illustrated, but it’s not all that interesting, really. One does wonder what exactly Clark is doing in that dorky outfit, though. Unsurprisingly with Leo Dorfman calling the tune, our headline tale is rather Silver Age-ish and goofy, as you’d expect from this cover.
The gimmicky tale begins in Professor Lang’s lab, where the good doctor has what he claims is a jar of ambrosia, the food of the gods, from ancient Greece. He also happens to claim that ambrosia was what gave the gods their powers, which makes me wonder if this guy got his degree out of a Cracker Jack’s box, as any school kid with an interest in mythology would know better. They got their powers by being, you know, gods. In some versions of the myths, ambrosia did have a role in their immortality, but that’s really not the same thing at all. Yes, it’s a comic book, but it’s a comic book in a setting where the Greek gods actually do exist, so details like this matter a bit.
Well, one way or the other, Dr. Cracker Jack decides to test some of the powered residue within the jar, but when he tries to, it explodes! I hope they haven’t given this guy tenure! The explosion wrecks the lab, but, of course, Clark is uninjured. He rushes to help Professor Lang, but Lana spots him hefting a bookshelf off the quack. At first she thinks this confirms her suspicions about him being Superboy, but seeing that he is holding the test tube and has traces of ambrosia on his face, she assumes that he ate the ambrosia, and thus gained the powers of the gods! With no real choice, supposedly, the Boy of Steel fakes the discovery of new powers, like Hermes’ flight, as if he were a novice.
In a purely rational and not at all wacky and bizarre response to this discovery, Lana’s first instinct is that Clark must show off to all of the bullies at school by going out for the track team. She even makes a costume for him, for some reason. This bit really makes no sense at all, in context. I guess because he’s ‘super’ he needs a costume? But he isn’t becoming a hero, just going out for sports. Oookay, Lana. Whatever you say.
You’ll be the coolest kid in school…and you’ll wear a dorky costume while you do it! It’s foolproof!
Well, “Super-Clark” (sigh) goes to the track field and shows off his strength and agility. There is actually a great opportunity for some characterization here, for Clark to revel in the ability to use his powers in public and to enjoy Lana’s attentions. Yet, Dorfman almost completely ignores that angle to focus on gimmicky situations for Clark’s ‘new’ powers. My favorite is definitely when Clark rescues a bathysphere that got in trouble….in Smallville…Kansas. Sure! Doesn’t your small farming town have bathyspheres on every street corner?
Needless to say, Pa Kent is rather shocked when an excited crowd shows up yelling about how his son has superpowers, but the new Smallville Spectacle explains things, pointing out that he’s happy he can help his father with his store. Apparently at this point, Pa Kent isn’t a farmer, instead owning a general store, which seems far less fitting, iconic, or archetypal for the character. After another series of super feats, Clark starts to get tired of the constant requests for aid and begins to realize the benefits of a secret identity.
Later on, a young, super-bald Lex Luthor comes back to town to get his revenge on the people who spurned him. He is thrilled when he sees the townspeople tearing down their Superboy statue, but he becomes less excited when he sees them replace it with a statue of (sigh) Super Clark. Man, Smallville residents are more fickle than Atlanteans! Lex is more constant, at least in his hatred, and using a new invention, a “power nullifer” which does just what the name implies, he shoots Superboy out of the sky once the young hero is back in costume.
The Boy of Steel crashes in a swamp and finds his powers gone. He rushes to the nearby ruined lab of Professor Lang, hoping to find some ambrosia on the off chance it will really give him powers. He finds the a note that was in the jar with the ambrosia and, conveniently, can read ancient Greek, which, you know, anybody can just pick up. He eats the note, hoping it absorbed some of the food of the gods and finds himself actually possessing the powers of the gods.
Using the Zeus’s shape-shifting power and thunderbolts, the ‘Phantom Vision” of Hades, and flight of Hermes, he manages to defeat Luthor’s various gadgets and drive off his former-friend-turned-foe. The story ends with the godly powers fading and Superboy’s own powers returning. When he tells Lana that his career as ‘Super Clark’ is over, she doesn’t exactly take the news gracefully.
Well, this story wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t exactly fantastic either. Dorfman wastes the chance to do some actual character work with Clark, botches his mythology, and throws in plenty of goofiness as well. The yarn is entertaining enough, and the section where Superboy gains the godly powers is an interesting change of pace. Yet, that is over in two pages, so we don’t really get a lot of opportunity to see the difference between those and his usual abilities. This story has some potential to be neat, but it ends up being fairly forgettable. I’ll give it 2.5 Minutemen, with the inexplicable ‘Super Clark’ costume costing it some points.
“Trust Me or Kill Me!”
Our Legion backup this month is once again the highlight of the book. It’s a fairly conventional identity mystery, the likes of which the Legion writers seem to love, but there are some neat details to it. The tale begins with the stalwart Cosmic Boy left alone in the Legion headquarters, as the rest of the team has gone off to get vaccinated against a new virus sweeping the planet, a vaccine he himself had received years ago. That’s a reasonably decent excuse to get the rest of the team out of the way for this story, and in light of the recent vaccination madness here in the U.S., I can’t help but smile.
Well, Cosmic Boy’s sojourn is interrupted when, all of a sudden, his double in a mirror smashes through the glass and attacks him! Each claims to be the original, and they find themselves evenly matched in combat, knowing each other’s moves. We also learn that Cosmic Boy knows a martial art named Ku-Jui, which he learned on his homeworld, a fun little detail and bit of world-building. They decide to call in help in order to figure out which of them is real, and they settle on Superboy, who they summon from the past. The Boy of Steel speeds through the Time Barrier (such a wonderfully comic book-ish concept), and joins the duplicated duo in the future.
Tuska really knocks the face-work on this story out of the park.
Once he arrives, he is confronted by a massive image of the Legion’s most deadly foe, Mordru! The evil wizard informs the young Action Ace that this is all part of one of his schemes. Mordru has created a duplicate of Cosmic Boy, and if the hero cannot discover him, the double will secretly destroy the Legionnaires one by one. I know very little about this character, but I have to say, I like this little glimpse of him. George Tuska does a great job of making Mordru’s image seem intimidating and ominous, while also giving him some good old fashioned villainous glee. His plan is really quite devious. It has the longshot possibility of destroying the Legion, but even if it fails, it promises to subject the team to terrible emotional strain as they face the possibility of destroying one of their friends in order to save themselves
Superboy tries to solve the mystery by quizzing the two Cosmic Boys, but each of them is able to answer his questions about their history. Realizing that the Legionnaires are on their way back , the Boy of Steel tries one last, desperate gambit. He flies off and returns with two massive iron boulders, hurtling them at both claimants to the Cosmic Boy title, saying that the real master of magnetism will be able to stop his rock.
Yet, when one of them fails to halt the hurtling stone, Superboy rushes to his rescue. The stunned youth wonders why, since he failed, but Clark explains that the rocks were actually plastic, and he counted on the fake Legionnaire using magic to simulate Cosmic Boys powers, rather than duplicating the powers themselves. Thus, they mystery is solved, and the story ends with Mordru swearing that the traditional vow of ‘this isn’t over’ and Superboy headed back to his own time.
This little tale has a clever resolution in Superboy’s plan. It’s a good way to solve the mystery, and it does make a certain amount of sense. There isn’t a whole lot to it beyond that, but we get some nice background on Cosmic Boy, and he gets a standard ‘you have to kill us both, Spock’ moment, though it is immediately countered by Superboy. Mordru’s very brief appearance is fun, and I look forward to seeing a full story with him as the villain. George Tuska’s art is bright and cheerful, and he really succeeds in making the protagonists look youthful, something not all comic artists can really pull off. His clean, expressive art is a nice fit for these characters. I certainly wouldn’t mind seeing him stay on this feature. I’ll give this little backup 3.5 Minutemen, as it makes for a fun read and has no real flaws other than its brevity.
And once again, we find ourselves at the end of a post. These stories present a widely varied whole, and they certainly illustrate how diverse an era we’re working with. In just this pair of books, we go from the creepy horror story of a haunted killer to the goofy antics of a gimmick driven Superboy farce. As silly as the latter story was, it’s an interesting and positive thing that both types of comic are being published by DC, a variety of tone and theme not seen after this era until very recently.
The Phantom Stranger tale is particularly notable for the overt use of horror elements and for the cold-blooded murder that actually happens on panel. It represents a darker type of story, one that had mostly passed out of mainstream comics with the dawning of the Silver Age and the rise of the Comics Code. The return of such storytelling marks the continuing shift across the genre to more mature and varied comics. Well, I hope that y’all enjoyed this read, and that y’all will join me again soon for the next stop on our journey, Into the Bronze Age! Until then, keep the Heroic Ideal alive!
The Greylands 