Sometimes We All Feel Like Punching An Elephant In The Face!! Strange Adventures #180, September, 1965

When Julius Schwartz, a former literary agent for Science Fiction writers, became Editor-in Chief of DC Comics, the connection between Silver Age Super Heroes and Sci-Fi was cemented once and for all.

Starting with a revival of the Flash (in Showcase #4) and moving quickly to more sci-fi oriented re-envisionings of Green Lantern Hawkman, and the Atom, it was clear that the DC superhero of the late 50's and early 1960 was probably going to have some "scientific" explanation for his/her powers.

At the time, it was quite unusual for a new character (or even a new version of an established character) to debut in their own title. DC had comics devoted solely to trying out new material, such as Showcase and The Brave and the Bold. Showcase debuted the new Flash, Green Lantern, B'wanna Beast, The Atom, etc. The Brave and the Bold debuted the JLA.

But, with the aforementioned connection between the new breed of hero and Sci-Fi, is it any wonder that one such hero would find his home in the pages of one of DC's Sci-Fi anthology books, Strange Adventures?

Enter "The Man with the Animal Powers" . Or, as he would be known as of issue #190, Animal Man.

No, you won't find the familiar, orange and blue superhero duds here. A-Man's debut is very much in the vein of any other one-off Strange Adventures tale. Except he kept going. And going. Until eventually, he got his own catchy hero name and costume.

Sadly, he was not a big seller in his own time. It was not until the 1980's that Animal Man reached wide exposure in a landmark series by writer Grant Morrison and as a team member of Justice League Europe.

Interestingly, the character who would later be depicted as a very adamant animal rights activist, would make his debut punching an elephant in the face.

Check it out yourself. Enjoy "The Man With The Animal Powers" from Strange Adventures #180. September 1965 by Dave Wood and Carmine Infantino-










Will Buddy save those kids? Will he live to pop the question to Ellen?? Will he pummel more animals for our amusement??? For the answers to these and other questions, tune in tomorrow. Same Man With The Animal Powers time, same Man With The Animal Powers channel!!

Forget the Russians, It's the Gorillas You Have to Beat! Strange Adventures #64

Just as mankind is on the verge of launching its first artificial satellite, it is visited by unexpected guests, guests with a warning!

A large spacecraft (described as a "space station" lands outside an American rocket base. The scientists and guards are stunned as its occupants emerge and turn out to be gorillas (who look a lot more like chimps to me)! The gorillas explain that they were once Earthmen who ventured into space. Cosmic rays caused them to devolve, physically, into gorillas while their minds stayed intact. The Space gorillas warn the scientists to wait until a cure is found before venturing into space themselves.

However, two-fisted science-guy , Dr. Owens doesn't buy their story. Sneaking onboard the gorilla ship, Owens discovers that the visitors are aliens in gorilla suits (still look like chimps to me). Jumping one of the aliens, Owens dons a gorilla suit and forces the ship to crash-land. Later, after explaining everything to his peers, Owens is asked what made him suspicious. Owens explains that the aliens, unlike men or gorillas, never blinked.

Mad Science Marches On- Strange Adventures #56

Part Two- "The Jungle Emperor".

So, what happened to the super-intelligent gorilla from the previous issue of Strange Adventures? Well, the whole world finds out as he delivers an ultimatum via television: "Hear this you humans! As the most intelligent and powerful being on Earth, I proclaim myself King Gorilla, the sole sovereign of this planet! Tomorrow morning my gorilla ambassadors will appear in each country to accept control of your governments! Unless my rule is unanimously accepted in 24 hours, I will strike with all the scientific powers at my command! You have been warned!" I love how every sentence ends with an exclamation point.

Poor Dr. Jonas Mills sits helplessly by, watching the threats of his accidental monster. Unable to make more "Mutaton" in the time left to him, he has only the antidote to mutaton on hand. Unfortunately, Dr. Mills has no idea of King Gorilla's whereabouts.

The next morning, each capital city of each nation receives an envoy from King Gorilla in the form of more intelligent gorillas who arrive in "super-scientific planes", equipped with shields of electric force.

Studying the newsreel footage of the gorillas' departures, Dr. Mills determines that the gorillas cannot be living creatures. Seems the G-forces created by the planes' acceleration would crush even a gorilla. To test his theory, Dr. Mills plants a fake news story that he has "developed a new weapon that will vanquish the gorilla hordes should they try to enforce their ultimatum!". He then sets up a thermocouple in his laboratory and waits. As he expected, the gorillas who come to kidnap him give off no body heat- they're robot gorillas!! (Does it get any better than robot gorillas? Really?)

The robot gorillas abduct Dr. Mills and take him via flying wing to King Gorilla's HQ in Africa. King Gorilla tells Mills he's the only Human the gorillas need fear and must be eliminated. Dr. Mills tells KG he's on to him and that he knows the other gorillas are robots. KG admits he was "too clever" to make other gorillas as smart as himself.

Searching for Mills' super-weapon, KG finds the bottle of antidote, which he confiscates. He then prepares to launch his attack, locking Mills in a cage. Mills starts a fire which cracks the bottle of antidote and vaporizes it's contents. The fumes dumb down King Gorilla, while Mills, safe behind a jury-rigged gas filter keeps his head.

The android armies of the King Gorilla stop in their tracks as their control console in Africa succumbs to the fire. The Earth is saved and the gorilla- 'droids are put on display as a reminder of how close the world came to conquest.

Dr. Mills reflects on his hard-earned lesson: "It's better for evolution to take it's own slow, natural course in this world!"

The similarities between 1955's King Gorilla and 1959's Gorilla Grodd are remarkable. Both want to conquer the world through the use of super-science, both are talking gorilla megalomaniacs, both have airplanes at their disposal... Of course, Grodd hails from a kingdom of intelligent gorillas and was not tampered with by human science. In that respect, KG bears a stronger resemblance to 1964's Monsieur Mallah.

I also love how comics and movies of the 50's and 60's refer to what is clearly technology as "science". I realize that the technological advances described are the direct result of breakthroughs in sciences like physics, but a ray-gun is no more a "super-science weapon" than a crossbow. A crossbow uses the science of Newtonian physics, but would never be considered a weapon of "science" in the same way as a laser. Same goes for a stone knife.

Joe Kubert Draws the Happiest Space Monster Ever for the Cover of... Strange Adventures #232

Okay, so this comic is from 1971. Hardly within the scope of the Silver Age, you say. And he just covered a comic from 1983 yesterday. Has this become a Bronze Age blog??? Fear not, True Believers! The contents of this little gem are all solidly Silver!

First up, reprinted from Mystery In Space #14, from back in 1953 we have a little number called "Hollywood in Space". It was written by John Broome and gorgeously drawn by Mort Drucker. I'll give you the teaser:

"Webb Weldon's fate as a movie director hung on the success of a multi-million dollar picture -- A spectacular space-adventure that he had made on actual location ... on unknown and ultra-distant worlds! And fame seemed within his grasp until that moment, back on Earth, when he ran part of the footage he had shot on the strange and very friendly planet of Xunis..."

"A multi-million dollar picture"? I'm guessing that 27th century dollars are worth more.

Next up, the Star Rovers hunt the aptly named but biologically improbable Loborilla in the sci-fi adventure yarn "Who Caught the Loborilla?" from Mystery In Space #66, 1961. Written by the immortal Gardner Fox and enthusiastically rendered by Sid Greene.

The Loborilla looks like something B'wanna Beast left lying around after a fight. The joke's on the Star Rovers, though. The Loborilla is actually a super-intelligent being on vacation.

Next up, we have a big-fat feature-length Adam Strange story, "The Multiple Menace Weapon" from Mystery In Space #72,1961, written, again by Gardner Fox and drawn by Carmine Infantino with inks by Murphy Anderson.



Adam Strange travels once more via Zeta Beam to his adopted planet, Rann. But this time, 100,000 years into the distant future, where people have predictably large heads and are unfamiliar with fire. I wonder if this is what happened to the Mars of Martian Manhunter? Anyway, as always Rann is menaced by an alien invasion only Adam Strange can stop. The action centers on the capital city of Rann, Ranagar City. I always love how the capital of Rann is Ranagar which rhymes with Hawkman's home world of Thanagar. It's like they asked Scooby-Doo to say "Thanagar".

The final tale in this issue is "The Magnetic Duel" from- you guessed it- Mystery In Space #17, 1954 (Maybe they shouldn't have cancelled Mystery In Space?). Written by John Broome and drawn by Murphy Anderson. I don't know about you, but I love a good space Western. Especially an old-school one where the space explorers wear cowboy hats and ray guns. Classic!



I'm old enough to remember comics costing a quarter, but not a big, fat 48-pager like this baby. Still, in 1971 the cost must have been scandalous, because Carmine Infantino himself wrote a memo to the readers, justifying the extravagant cost:


I love how Infantino asks you to "rap" for a moment and that he understands that you expect a lot for your hard-earned "bread". "But the fact that you bought it is what turns us on. " -Shades of SNAPPER CARR! That's some hip talk! Carmine sounds like he just got busted on Dragnet.

Even funnier, though, is the idea that this comic contains "Specially selected stories that we were planning for a long time... and that time is now!" This is ALL reprints. I'm pretty sure that kept the overhead down and allowed DC to get more for their "bread".