This “sun watch” does everything but tell f–king time
Behold, the Rube Goldberg of wrist-worn timepieces. I mean, really… It’s like having a Swiss Army knife, if said knife lacked an actual cutting implement. Yes, there’s some ancient (un)scientific timekeeping functionality, though you shouldn’t have to be Pythagoras to figure out what the hell time it is. And you shouldn’t be without time-telling recourse after sunset. Synchronize your sundials, men!
But hey, you’ll be able to chart constellations and decipher Morse code. And the weather forecaster and fire-starting magnifying glass fold out to give it nice Mickey Mouse ears. HUZZAH.
Sparkle Plenty, a Dick Tracy character and the daughter of B.O. Plenty and Gravel Gertie (she actually turned out rather well considering that dubious genetic stock), once had enough cachet to pawn off a cheap ukulele knockoff on unsuspecting youngsters. One wonders whether this “ukette” and its instructional booklet led to mastery of the instrument faster than the piano’s Rhythmagraph method. Color me skeptical.
You can find pictures of one about halfway down this page. It looks like — surprise! — cheap plastic junk.
Think the Batman-Robin relationship was a little odd? GET A LOAD OF THIS. – Black Cat #28
Everyone having a passing familiarity with comics has at some point stopped and contemplated the strange relationship between Batman and Robin. A reclusive, wealthy bachelor takes a child not related to him into his home, imperils that child’s life at every nocturnal opportunity by involving him in his costumed crimefighting, with the kid flitting around half nude in a garish costume that offers NONE of the camouflage offered by the adult’s dark togs, and we’re supposed to be okay with all that. The closer you look at it, the more off-putting it becomes. And that’s not including the unintentional sexual subtext that makes the Bruce Wayne/Dick Grayson relationship NAMBLA’s catamite fantasy-land, which was enough to help send Fredric Wertham into his McCarthyite strafing of an entire industry. Are you or have you ever been a comic book artist?
Kids today with their young adult Robins that have covered legs. They just don’t know how good they have it.
And you know what? When it came to sidekick oddness, Batman had nothin’ on the Black Cat.
In case the above cover (art by Lee Elias, who handles the interiors as well) didn’t make it clear enough, we’re not dealing with Marvel’s white-tressed Black Cat here, but the Golden Age “Darling of Comics” original. And as alluring as Felicia Hardy’s MILFish ways were, the old-timey Cat could hold her own in the sexual comic character Olympics. If you’re unfamiliar, this Black Cat was Linda Turner, a Hollywood actress by day (way to keep a low profile), who fought for truth and justice in boots, gloves and a bathing suit whenever called upon. EXCELSIOR. The character had her start at Harvey Comics in the early 1940s, and for a long while went through her adventures solo, sometimes aided by her reporter boyfriend, Rick Horner, and her father, retired actor Tim Turner.
But that solo career came to an end with this issue. Yes, the Black Cat got herself a sidekick. One that wasn’t all that original, but one that added a new sexual twist to the old Boy Wonder dynamic.
The action (which is split over multiple stories, all chronicling the introduction and incorporation of our sidekick) starts when Rick gets a tip that there’s a fire at a circus (the “heard this before” wheels in your head should be turning already) which was started by a villain called the Fire Bug, and Linda tags along. When they arrive, they learn that a young member of one of the acrobatic acts is trapped in the big top. (Wheels spinning.) This is just the kind of situation where Linda earns her pay, and she surreptitiously changes into her Black Cat attire (YES!!!) and OH GOD SHE’S GOING TO SHOOT HERSELF OUT OF A CANNON MAYBE SHE SHOULD THINK THIS THROUGH OOPS OH WELL THERE SHE GOES:
Yes she is, lad. Yes she is.
Poor judgment be damned, the Cat and the young man, Kit Weston, make it out of the inferno. But the news isn’t all good, as his parents, the rest of the Flying Westons (wheels REALLY spinning now) died. Kit is understandably devastated, and Linda takes him back home to stay with her.
I realize that this book was published in 1951, and adoption standards and foster programs were perhaps different in those early postwar years, but one wonders if there might not have been a little more red tape involved in such an arrangement. Maybe a document to sign or something. So that you couldn’t simply walk away from an orphaning disaster with a shiny new potty-trained child. I mean, even Madonna has to go all the way to Africa to buy a kid.
Nevertheless, off to chez Turner they go. Kit still feels down (that big-ass forehead of his can hold a lot of furrows), but perks up when the Black Cat comes a-knockin’ — and really, who wouldn’t?:
They indeed go on that motorcycle ride, and the reader ponders whether Kit, riding bitch, felt a strange new stirring in his loins as he held tight and pressed himself into the Cat’s bare back.
Right out of the box the Cat — who doesn’t at first reveal her true identity — imperils the youngster, letting him tag along so that he can get revenge on the Fire Bug who killed his parents. They track him down, but he apparently falls to his death (though not before they get his costume and also learn that his true name is Orson Arson, yes ORSON ARSON.) This isn’t the catharsis for Kit that one would hope, as seen in the next panels, as Linda and her pipe-addled father discuss the situation and blithely dismiss the boy’s burgeoning anger issues:
I’m not sure, but “beating up empty clothes” might be a serial killer precursor. “Oh, look, now he’s torturing small animals. For cute!”
All this carries over into the second story, in which Kit makes a sweaty, voyeuristic discovery while poking around the house:
Love the Family Circus view. Makes you think of the Erin Andrews peephole tape.
Kit soon proves his mettle once again, pummeling a would-be burglar Home Alone-style, and this finally convinces Linda that he can be of help in her other line of work. Her idiot father puffs approvingly as Linda reveals her secret and bestows a new and obvious moniker — and some tights — on Kit:
WHY DID THEY FLOP THE BIG COSTUME PAYOFF PANEL SIDEWAYS? I’m sorry that you have to tilt your head to get a look at “The Black Kitten.” It’s not my fault. Really.
Anyway, the comic then slides toward its conclusion with Kit helping the Cat battle assorted foes, include the giant red-bearded pirate seen on the cover. Consider that the champagne-bottle-to-the-prow of his sidekick career. Hey, at least he has pants.
There. Rob- I mean, the Black Kitten.
Okay. Some thoughts:
- THEY COMPLETELY RIPPED OFF DICK GRAYSON’S ORIGIN. Right down to The Flying Graysons. I mean, criminy, could they have made the plagiarism any more blatant? It’s so egregious, I’m afraid DC is going to sue me for just talking about it.
- Cats are widely seen as female creatures — just like dogs are seen as masculine — so it’s REALLY weird to have a young boy called “Kitten.” Maybe I’m committing some horrible post-millennial sin by assigning gender roles to boys, girls and beasts, but I can’t help it. I’d recoil at being called “Kitten,” that’s all I know. Then again, my parents didn’t burn to death in a circus tent. And I might let this broad call me any damn thing she wants.
- There are multiple layers to the sex angle at play here. You have the “hot for teacher” identification going, one that can appeal to Y chromosomes both young and old. The Black Cat’s steamy outfit is going to draw boys who don’t quite understand why it’s so hot and adults who understand all too well, and wish they could be in this Kitten’s shoes. While there’s nothing overtly sexual here, as there wasn’t in the old Batman/Robin relationship, there’s still plenty to be unearthed, especially by jaded 21st century eyes, and the cross-gender tag-teaming stands out and makes you take notice. And let’s be clear: Unwanted sexual advances by an older woman to a young boy are never okay, as Spider-Man taught us all too well. Wanted ones are wrong, too. But to come oh so close is to approach the fulfillment of every adolescent fantasy under the sun. We can all live vicariously through young Kit — he and his tights are right on the border of the promised land.
- For a 1940s-1950s character, the Black Cat was one smokin’ hot mama jama. Godspeed, Kit. Someday you’ll appreciate what you had.
The Black Kitten was a part of the Black Cat’s adventures from here on out, though “here on out” only lasted for one more issue. The title was then changed to Black Cat Mystery Comics and, like her Golden Age repurposed name counterpart, Daredevil, she was booted out of her own book. A few reprints of her hot-outfitted adventures followed in subsequent decades, including some in recent memory, but Linda Turner and her uniquely vivacious brand of crimefighting have languished. I’m not certain whether that’s for good or ill. All I know is that Kit/Kitten was odd, if less creepy than the sidekick of which he was a carbon copy.
Red Ryder, Dick Tracy, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry do their damnedest to get you selling seeds
In old comics you now and again see ads hawking the prizes that kids could earn simply by selling seeds, in some reverse reworking of the Jack and the Beanstalk formula — and also related to the classic GRIT slave-labor business model. The American Seed Company was really pulling out all the stops with this all-star lineup, though. A Red Ryder gun, a Dick Tracy camera (which we’ve seen before), and a Gene Autry guitar are natural, mouth-watering fits, though Roy Rogers binoculars seem like an ill-fitting stretch. “We already gave Red the gun, Roy.” “But there’s a pistol right beneath the binoculars. Can’t I have that?”
If this magic kit doesn’t come with the hat, the cape, the rabbit and the graying temples, then why buy it?
When did a red cape and a top hat become stock elements of generic magicians, so ingrained in the culture that they even found their way onto comic book doll magicians? Relatedly, how could one ever hope to convincingly perform any of the tricks enumerated above without them?
I’m reminded of Gob from Arrested Development: “Tricks are something that a whore does for money. Or cocaine.”
When Thor and Loki play chess in a Murphy Anderson Justice League cover swipe… – Heroes Convention #20
This is a little slice of comic book ephemera, a part of the convention scene that forms such an integral corner of the industry. The Heroes Convention is a long-running Charlotte gathering, founded by the Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find people, and it’s been in existence long enough to produce a meaty program to go along with the proceedings. Hence what you see before you. This 2001 edition of the in-house magazine has what you’d expect from a convention program, with thank yous, floor plans and look who’s showing up! blurbs in abundance. It’s a nice, thick little chotchke to go with whatever other swag gets carried out of the convention center.
There’s also information about charity auctions and the good causes that are going to be benefited. Such as:
A word about this — I certainly have no problem with creators protecting their intellectual property rights, and I have no personal beef with Harlan Ellison (though by many accounts he’s a bit of a crank), but putting such a cause side by side with burned children is a rough dichotomy. HARLAN ELLISON IS COMING AFTER THE INTERNET AND HE NEEDS YOUR HELP, oh and also there are some horribly scarred kids that you might wish to consider. One seems to trump the other, that’s all I’m saying.
The Avengers were an artistic theme within (and without) this edition, as artists appearing — and some not appearing — at the convention contributed bits of artwork. Certain entries are quite appealing, some not so much so. For some reason I really like the look of Iron Man in this George Tuska (he of many yeoman-like House of Ideas strips) one-pager. Maybe it’s the mouth in place of the usual slit:
The real corker, the thing that made me want to throw together a post, comes on the back. Swiping famous covers is a never-ending diversion, and sometimes it can lead to reworked images that outstrip the original in certain ways. Most everyone is familiar with the Murphy Anderson cover to Justice League of America #1, as the Flash plays a rigged game of chess with his colleagues represented by the pieces and sitting next to him at the table. It’s iconic. But it can’t compete with the whimsy you get when you shoehorn the Avengers in there:
There’s a lot to process, mostly that Anderson so easily assimilated Marvel characters into the Silver Age DC milieu. The Hulk is in the Martian Manhunter’s spot, filling the green epidermis quota. There are extra chess pieces for characters not seen at the table, just like in the original. Loki, the villain in Avengers #1, makes the shift over, replacing Despero.
And it all looks so natural. That there might be some benign mirror universe out there where there was a Silver Age Heroes League of America is a nice little diversion. Wouldn’t be a bad place in which to twirl a spin rack. And this is the sort of picture I’d bid on at a charity auction, whether the cause was injured kids or Harlan Ellison tilting at windmills.
Should your NFL fantasy team(s) be insufficient to sate your football lust, Strat-O-Matic is there
I don’t have an NFL fantasy team, and I’m not a fan of any of the Stat-O-Matic games, whether they be baseball or anything else. But if you’re a fantasy buff, one that’s in a dozen different leagues with spreadsheets laid out before you every Sunday, and you just can’t get enough, I’d think resorting to Strat-O-Matic for a fix would be like an alcoholic guzzling Listerine.
Always wondered why DC comic books used to have the checkered effect on the upper cover?
The answer to why DC comics had the black and white chess board up there on top (like on this Sea Devils comic)? Dopey branding, so people could spot DC magazines from a thousand yards away. Though if potential readers ever saw this “GO-GO CHECKS!” copy, there might have been a heavy round of douche-chilling going on.
This comic lacks raggediness. Or raggeditude. Or raggediosity. Something. – Raggedy Ann and Andy #2
Having as a young child proudly owned a Raggedy Andy doll — in those early single digits before all toys had to have some sort of gun attached — I have a bone to pick with this comic. And to do that, I have to ask a rhetorical question, and it is: What’s the most defining feature of the Raggedy Ann and Andy design, the one that’s been with them since their storybook inception (which was almost a hundred years ago)? If you said “the unkempt red yarn hair,” then you and I are operating on the same wavelength. When I imagine my old Raggedy Andy doll, who’s probably sitting in a dark closet somewhere right now, it’s the hair that I think of. Not his sailor suit. Not his floppy arms. Not his wide-open eyes. The hair.
You see Raggedy Ann and Andy up on that cover? The red yarn hair? The red yarn hair that is THE DEFINING FEATURE OF RAGGEDY ANN AND ANDY? Take a good look, because that’s the last time you’re going to see it in this post. Because it’s the last time that you see it in this comic.
Yes, this book somehow managed to muck up one of the most iconic doll designs that the world has ever known, and instead made Raggedy Ann and Andy — can you even call them Raggedy now? — look more like the Hobbits from the Rankin and Bass Return of the King. Their round heads and big buggy eyes are so reminiscent, you keep expecting to hear Glenn Yarbrough’s warbly voice rising out of the comic. This hair is so, SO screwed up. It’s cropped short, AND IT’S NOT EVEN RED. Who’s in charge here — let me speak to the manager.
This comic series, one of several to tackle the venerable Raggedy mythos, takes a Toy Story approach to the lives of Ann and Andy, before there was such a thing as Toy Story, with a girl’s dolls springing to life whenever she’s asleep or out of sight. As a premise this is, let’s be honest, terrifying. I’m fairly certain that every season of The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits and Tales from the Darkside all had at a bare minimum five episodes each where dolls came alive and started killing people. CREEPY. Sure, it all starts out nice and sweet, with gumdrops and happy songs and rainbows, but sooner or later someone gets stabbed in the eye with a penknife. (It should be noted that this comic is where I pulled the bizarre and off-putting Butterfly Maidens ad. Made for each other.)
There are four (mercifully) brief stories in this comic, all with Ann, Andy and their assorted comrades-in-plush-arms having real or imaginary adventures outside of their bedroom prison. The first has them travelling to the Middle East with a magician and riding around on flying carpets while running afoul of whatever scimitar-wielding authorities there are:
Surprised that they didn’t see Morpheus and Harun al-Rashid heading the other way.
The second has them left outside by their owner during a snowstorm, and going into survival mode with a helpful Eskimo doll:
How did they smooth out those snowballs into perfect igloo block dimensions? Are they igloo savants? Is that part of the magic that allows them to walk and talk?
The third shows that even dolls get the blues. Henny, a little Dutch boy doll, gets a glimpse of his homeland in a travel agency poster, and this sends him into a deep, deep depression:
No, he’s not sick. He’s just grown tired of his bondage. Back away, Ann, cause this guy’s about to snap like the prisoner in Escape from Alcatraz who chopped off his own fingers in desperate protest (relax, he doesn’t — that’s just hyperbole). Dolls bed-ridden with crippling sadness — enjoy, kids! (They manage to cure his ills with an imaginary trip to the land of windmills and dikes and marijuana. Not buying it. You have to think that this manic swing will be short-lived.)
These dolls must have a lot of pent-up frustrations, what with their interminable indentured servitude in a little girl’s bedroom. “If I have to sit through another one of her f–king tea parties, I swear to God…” That sort of thing.
The fourth has the dolls rescuing one of their number after a stray dog grabs it and takes it into a haunted house. I’ll post no scans from this one, and instead simply say this: THE DOLLS THAT COME ALIVE AND STALK AROUND WHEN NO ONE IS LOOKING ARE THE ONES THAT LIVE IN A HAUNTED HOUSE. OKAY?
There’s no listing here for who scripted and illustrated this comic, nor was said information easily found through a brief internet search. Perhaps that’s for the best. The art is neat and clean (the flying carpet scenes in particular have nicely rendered backgrounds), but the design for the two stars is utterly bewildering. I mean, really, how do you screw this up? Were they running low on red ink? Is that it? Was someone trying to put their stamp on the Raggedy franchise? The world may never know. I might not be in the target demo for a comic like this (and dear God, I hope I’m not), but I know Raggedy Ann and Andy when I see them. And these are pale-haired substitutes.
Some doctors’ bedside manners include very long lectures to affirm their medical superiority
Here’s another clunky PSA from the schoolmarmish folks at the National Social Welfare Assembly, penned by Jack Schiff and illustrated by Sheldon Moldoff. You know, if testing your “Brotherhood Quotient” wasn’t enough. I’m sure the kid with the hole in his foot is glad that the doctor is going into his long-winded debunking spiel. Might as well get his Amway pitch in while he’s at it. But hey, if you’re dumb enough to cure frostbite with snow or slap raw meat on your face to clear up a black eye, than maybe this would be good for you.
I find the old G.I. Goe “Knowing Is Half the Battle!” bits far less intrusive (though in this instance our font of unsolicited advice also appears out of nowhere). And far more informative, too, since something like “never slap a choking person on the back” is much more vital than whether or not shaving makes hair grow faster.
Also, I’d bet good money that this doc closed his bag, went back to his car and lit a cigarette to open up his lungs.
If you trust Kenner to Easy-Bake your food, why not let them do your hair and nails?
Kenner, the fine people behind the food-poisoning-waiting-to-happen Easy-Bake Oven, also churned out some related “Easy” beauty products for young girls. You know, to further lock them into their traditional gender roles. Prepare Food/Do Hair/Paint Nails. I’m sure these products were wonderful and safe and provided the distaff youth of America with hours of enjoyment, but the “electric light bulb that gently warms rollers” is making images of Michael Jackson’s Ghost Rider stint flash before my eyes.
Also, the “power attachments” in the manicure set sound like extras for a Black & Decker drill.
For the NFL opener, let’s go back in time to outdated rosters and Johnny Unitas’ flattop – Charlton Sport Library #1
The American sports fiscal year begins tonight, as the New York Giants and the Dallas Cowboys (of Danger in Dallas fame) battle in the midweek opener to the NFL season. It’s truly remarkable what a weekly smorgasbord professional football has become, with a Sunday feast followed by an entire week of talk radio/ESPN digestion and anticipation of doing it all again the very next weekend. It’s a seventeen week cycle leading into the playoffs and the biggest television event of the year, the Super Bowl. The NFL bestrides the sports landscape like a colossus in a helmet and shoulder pads, concussion concerns be damned.
Lest we forget, however, the NFL wasn’t always the alpha male of sports that it is today. There was once a time when baseball wasn’t just the national pastime, but also sat atop the pyramid. And this little oddity is a relic of those bygone days, back at the beginning football’s Super Bowl era.
This 1969 mag was the only edition of Charlton’s “Sport Library” that was ever published, and it didn’t even cover the entire breadth of the sport that it was supposed to tackle (no pun intended). The NFL and AFL were still separate entities at this point, and the junior league, fresh off its first Super Bowl triumph, was quite possibly scheduled for a subsequent edition. So you’re only getting half of the old pro football pie here. And, just so you don’t get your hopes up, there are no jaw-dropping sequential stories within chronicling the lives and times of old greats like Gale Sayers and Fran Tarkenton. Instead the book is just what it its title suggests: an illustrated league-wide program, summarizing the year that was and looking ahead to the upcoming season.
Yet it’s not without its charm.
Veteran artist Tony Tallarico drew the portraits and wrote the blurbs that accompanied each team’s entry. It’s kind of neat to go through and read the simple contemporaneous evaluations of in-progress careers, without the crystallizing help of hindsight, and I’d be remiss to not present the true heavyweight great in these pages, Johnny Unitas. Here he is in all his close-cropped glory, with a hint of that most roiling of football dilemmas, the quarterback controversy:
Washington, D.C. is my adopted home, so I’d be doubly remiss in skipping over the entry for the Redskins. It’s somewhat noteworthy for its side-by-side pairing of quarterbacking legend Sonny Jurgensen with his long-time broadcast partner, Sam Huff. These two guys have been calling Redskins games on the radio for a long, long time, and their rather unique brand of “analysis” has endeared them to generations. Sadly, the partnership may be nearing its end, as they’ve grown a little more confused and crotchety of late (Geriatrics Say the Darndest Things), and Huff’s not going to be calling all the games this year. Oh well. Anyway, here they are — Jurgensen about to drill you with a tight spiral and Huff (who came out of retirement to play in ’69) about the knock your head off:
This would also be the one year that legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi would guide the Redskins, having been coaxed back into the league to right that ship. Cancer would take his life far too early the very next year, but here’s his unique gap-toothed Ernest Borgnine-ish smile, embodying all the optimism that a new roster and a new season represents:
The last feature before that year’s schedule is a retrospective on Super Bowl III, when Joe Namath — with his guarantee of victory and his Dingo boots — led the New York Jets to their colossal upset of the juggernaut Baltimore Colts. It’s here that Tallarico comes the closest to actual comic storytelling, giving a quarter by quarter breakdown of the action — accompanied by rather stilted action shots — as the impossible became the inevitable. Here’s the first page so you get the gist:
And that’s pretty much all there is to it. I talked to someone who’s forgotten more about comics than I’ll ever know, and he said that this is actually rather hard to find in nice condition, because there was actual week by week utility to it, especially in those dark days before instant information — or cable TV for that matter. When you see these, they’re often well-worn. Just a footnote.
If you love football, enjoy. If you don’t, move right along. Nothing to see here. (Probably should have put this at the top.)
Unleash your inner Miss Havisham with these really odd “Butterfly Maidens” posters
I’m pretty sure Jame “Buffalo Bill” Gumb had these hanging up where he was sewing that bodysuit made from the skin of murdered women. “Pressed with real butterflies.” CREEPY. I’m not certain what sort of decor the Butterfly Maidens were intended to accentuate, but clearly they should be hung in a shuttered room, one with plentiful cobwebs and sheet-covered furniture.
Still, if you have a disturbed shut-in in your life and you just don’t know what to get them for Christmas…
A boozed up Broadway Joe Namath has some crime-fightin’ boots for you
Is it just me, or does Joe Namath look a little blitzed in this old Dingo boots ad? And I’m not using blitz in the “aggressively rush the quarterback in an attempt to sack him” sense, but in the “drunk out of his gourd” sense. At least he didn’t ask any of the kids to kiss him. Poor Suzy Kolber wasn’t as lucky, and hence suffered his beery, amorous wrath.
And yet he’s still a better spokesman than O.J.
Namath says he’s sober these days. Good for him. I wonder if he still has any Dingos around the house.
The Sea Devils proudly follow in Aquaman’s “Terrible Underwater Storytelling” footsteps – Sea Devils #29
The Sea Devils have their fans. I’ve heard them out there, waxing nostalgic over the undersea adventures of the non-superpowered aquatic version of the Challengers of the Unknown. The Sea Devils’ playground was that other final frontier, the unexplored depths of the Earth’s oceans. There was always a Jacques Costuea vibe clinging to their briny, seaweed-infused shenanigans, with colorful, otherworldly threats swimming up from the depths.
And my God, could they ever suck.
Silver Age DC has some pretty deep troughs of awful. We’ve seen examples of them that time and time again, as magazines and blogs have chronicled exemplars of the most insipid storytelling that was ever sold for a dime and two pennies. I’ve jumped onto that hogpile myself, and on more than one occasion. But this comic added a new wrinkle. You see, just when you think it’s a rather meh, pedestrian affair, with all the overused tropes and silly dialogue of the 1960s DC toolkit, a curve comes in at the end and whacks you over the head. That’s when you realize that what you have just read is insultingly terrible. Really, REALLY bad.
Let me guide you through this woeful tale.
The story (Pencils: Howard Purcell, Inks: Sheldon Moldoff) opens with the Sea Devils — head stud Dane Dorrance, Biff Bailey, Dane’s babe Judy “Yoko” Walton, and Nicky Walton — travelling with a nameless professor on a vaguely sciencey mission to investigate an underwater volcano. Trouble soon finds them, though, and it comes in the form of a huge, bipedal menace. No, not Gorgo, just a big ugly dude:
The Sea Devils give him battle before he can crunch their submarine like a soda can. In the midst of the melee, we get our first sexist line of the day. HUZZAH:
I’d think “Magnesium Flare Deployment” would be a gender-neutral task, but hey, what does a land-lubber like me know?
The volcano has opened up a fissure in the ocean floor, which sucks the Sea Devils, the professor, and the monster into the subterranean unknown, in the process separating Nicky from the group. Once in this uncharted territory, the monster shrinks down into a regular-sized schlub of a man, Lucas, who looks like a cross between Jerry Lewis and Droopy Dog:
I don’t like him…
What’s down in this crevice? Why, an undersea kingdom, of course, one filled with human-like people who are double our size and who surround themselves with all things gold. They’re ruled by a queen, the Golden Goddess (so it’s a queendom, I guess), and she’s in the market for a mate. Cue the muted trombones and bared claws!:
Dane is then put to the test of kingship, which entails fighting the monster Valdo (monsters galore) in the spiked death chamber that you see on the above cover. He prevails, impaling the snarling seahorse-ish thing on spikes, but he’s badly hurt in the process. This sends the Golden Goddess into a tizzy, and she heals her would-be king with ADVANCED CRACKLING TECHNOLOGY:
“Hey, staying with the giant big-breasted babe could be nice, I guess there’s really no downs- wait a minute!”
What follows is a rapid series of crosses and double-crosses, as the Sea Devils plot their escape, the Golden Goddess gets wind of their plans, and both play dumb as they wait to put the screws to the other. Just as the Goddess springs her trap, there’s a deus ex machina when OH S–T A GIANT GOLD GUY IN A SKORT ARRIVES:
Oh. It’s Neptimius. The International Sea Devils’ mobile walking gold giant headquarters. He’s named after the first skindiver — did you know that? Fascinating.
Anyway, so the cavalry is here, led by Nicky, who went and got help instead of drowning. The Sea Devils, the professor and Lucas/Droopy make their getaway. But here comes the swerve — Lucas is taken ill, and has a mind-numbing confession about their captors: he was really a thief trying to steal their process for extracting gold and — screw it, let him finish:
Let’s parse this. The Golden Goddess — and by extension, her people — aren’t really all that bad after all. She was just burned by Lucas’ thievery. Burned enough to want to kill the strangers who stumbled into her realm. Oh, and stage elaborate and deadly games to test whether or not the chief hunk among them could rule by her side.
And this is supposedly all wiped away by a deathbed confession of a half-nude stranger. With plenty of gobbledygook about strange rays to punish evil by making evil-doers into big ugly monsters thrown in for good measure. Here’s where we should all stand up and yell NOT BUYING IT. This all makes that last panel the cherry on top of the sundae of stupid. I mean, really, they want to go back? The slate is clean just like that? It’s not that it invalidates what was just read, it’s that it makes it even more unappealing. It’s like trying to dig out of a hole, and just making the pit deeper.
I’m too tired to smack my head against this any further.
There are no talent credits in this comic, but the Grand Comics Database (where I got the penciller and inker — they’re stuff is creditable, btw) tentatively lists the scripter as Bob Haney. Maybe he wrote this, maybe he didn’t, but I’m sure that whoever’s responsible turned in a stinker. I know there are time-related pressures with churning out a monthly comic, and the Sea Devils aren’t the most fertile narrative soil to begin with, and even that everyone is entitled to a bad day now and then, but still. This is bad. Dumb. Head-smackingly dumb.
While I was going through this comic for the first time, I noticed that someone had once burned through the margins of one of the pages with a cigarette. I now understand why. The Sea Devils’ book didn’t have much staying power, and only lasted seven more issues after this one. I now understand the “why” for that as well.
Jared
blog into mystery 