What Was The Missing Piece for Mr. Jigsaw??... Scary Tales #38

Okay, this is NOT a Silver Age comic. But bear with me. See, when I was a kid, I bought my comics from the spinner rack at the local Rexall drug store, conveniently placed on my route home from school. I mostly bought GI Joe and Transformers and Indiana Jones. I wasn't much on superhero comics when I was eleven. I had been let down by how little the superheroes of the late 1970's had resembled my beloved Superfriends and wouldn't get sucked back into superheroes for another couple years (by Alpha Flight, of all things!). I had previously purchased an issue of Scary Tales when I was eight and it had scared the Hell out of me. I had since avoided horror comics.

But this day, something about this comic caught my eye. Maybe it was the mystery as to why Scary Tales had a superhero on the cover. Maybe it was because, once I had seen Mr. Jigsaw, Man of a Thousand Parts, I had to know what this was all about.

At any rate, I coughed up the $0.60 (which was almost enough to get two Zero bars!) and took it home.

Now, I'm not going to pretend this comic was some work of genius, ahead of its time- although it was a breath of fresh air. No, what's great about this comic is it's unfulfilled potential. See, Charlton had already tried superheroes in the 1960's and decided to get out of the sandbox (except for 1973's E-Man). They sold their stable of 60's heroes to DC, who would eventually order a script written to use them that would become the Watchmen- look, that's a whole other story.

Back to the potential. The thing is, Charlton took a new hero comic and gave it top billing and the cover in Scary Tales. That's almost exactly how Marvel broke back into the superhero business in the 1960's. All their now-famous heroes (well, except for the Fantastic Four and the Hulk) began life in comics like Tales to Astonish and Tales of Suspense and Amazing Fantasy and Strange Tales.

So, yeah. This single issue of Scary Tales was like a time bomb. But it never went off.

Mr. Jigsaw is a fairly entertaining hero conceptually, with a quirky charm that reminds me of Plastic Man. Sadly, even if he had been picked up as a regular feature, 1985's Watchmen and Batman: the Dark Knight Returns would have buried him with their grim and gritty backlash.


I have posted the entire story here for your enjoyment. Just click on the pages to see them bigger
Oh! and where the pages are crooked- Charlton printed them that way.















Special thanks to Scott M. at "Seduction of the Indifferent" for reviewing this comic on his blog and reminding me it existed. Also to Mykal at "Gold Key Comics!" for indirectly giving me the idea to just post the whole 12 page story.

UPDATE!: Since this story was posted, this blog became aware of the continued existence of Mr. Jigsaw. To read about his more recent adventures and to check out our interview with Mr. Jigsaw co-creator, Ron Fortier, check out this later post:
http://aquamanrules.blogspot.com/2009/11/interview-with-mr-jigsaw-creator-ron.html

Thanks !

Saturday Morning 1967- Green Lantern

In 1967, Filmation released the new "Superman/Aquaman Hour of Adventure" which, as you might guess, featured the previous year's Superman cartoons along with a new batch of cartoons featuring Aquaman. It also featured appearances by Hawkman, The Flash, The Atom, The Justice League of America, the Teen Titans and (obviously) Green Lantern.

These Filmation DC Heroes cartoons are all pretty much the same. The heroes fight one or two of their villains and a whole lot of made-up, Filmation aliens. There are two reasons why the Green Lantern segments are significant: One, they're the first animated appearance of Green Lantern and two, they feature a sidekick.

Green Lantern is almost unique amongst Silver Age DC heroes in that he doesn't actually have a sidekick-no Lantern Boy or Lantern Lad or Greenie, the Wonder Flame. The good folks at Filmation saw this obvious deficiency and stepped up to the plate. They gave us a cute, blue kid from Venus named Kairo.

Funny thing is, Green Lantern didn't have a costumed sidekick in the comics, but he did have a helper. A close friend and confidant who knew his secret, leant a hand, dry-cleaned his tights...

His name was Thomas Kalamaku. But, as far as GL was concerned, his name was "Pieface".

This may need some explaining. Tom is a Native Alaskan, or an Eskimo as we (Honkies) used to call them. And, if you've never left the "lower 49", you may not realize this, but "pieface" is an ethnic slur.

So, Filmation felt they needed to do DC one better and not go around having a superhero calling his sidekick by a name that was, frankly, offensive.

So, here's to you, Kairo. You may have been a lame, last-minute replacement, but at least you never let the Man keep you down!

Editor's Note: The Editors of The Flash Knew $#@! About Science!

Flash comics have a lot of "Editor's Note" captions in them. These captions are usually accompanied by a "scientific fact", the most common one being " Editor's Note: The Flash's costume expands on contact with the air, just as a life raft expands upon contact with water". Wrong! A life raft is not like one of those cheesy business cards that's really a compressed sponge. A life raft expands when you activate the compressed air cylinder attached to it. Next!

"Editor's Note: Just as the intense heat of the desert causes mirages, so Captain Cold's cold ray, by lowering the temperature to absolute zero, causes cold mirages." Extremely wrong! Mirages are not hallucinations. Mirages are optical illusions, refracted light which is bent by heat to reflect an unstable image of the sky above. Basically, wavy air reflecting a picture of the sky on the ground, which looks like water.

That's right. Water. NOT big, scary dragons.

Other Un-scientific Stuff:

And speaking of Captain Cold... In his first appearance, Cpt. Cold, aka Len Snart builds a ray gun and then breaks into a laboratory to use their cyclotron. He places his homemade ray gun into the cyclotron and bombards it, then takes it out to see what it will do? Now I'm neither a scientist nor an engineer, but shouldn't you have had to have had a PURPOSE in mind for the ray gun BEFORE you built it? I mean, how would you design a gun to do something without having any idea what you wanted it to do?? Luckily it makes things cold. It could have turned out to be a ray that waxes cars or something.

Also, Captain Cold's costume is very centered on his cold theme. Which is visually, very appealing but how practical is it? I mean, until he fires off that cold gun, he's just a dude walking around in a parka, right? How uncomfortable would that be, say nine months out of the year?


Oh, but I haven't forgotten you, Captain Boomerang (who promoted these guys to Captain, anyway?). Let me just say, that strapping the Flash to a giant boomerang has one obvious result: rendering the boomerang aerodynamically unsound. Also, if it did work, wouldn't the boomerang just bring him back to kick your ass anyway? You have to think these things through.


And, while I'm bashing the Flash's baddies, I don't care HOW slow Turtle Man is. The Flash is capable of not going fast. He's always late as Barry Allen. I think he could manage not to run past this schmuck.

Thank The gods Tis Thor's Day!- Journey Into Mystery # 84

As promised, Thor returns. And so does "Lame Doctor Donald Blake"...to America.

We get to see what things are like for Dr. Blake when he's not vacationing in Northern Europe. Seems like he's a kindly, caring physician who still makes house calls. Also his nurse, Jane Foster (In this issue, she's referred to as Jane Nelson- maybe they lost the notes from this issue going forward?) is desperately in love with him. Or, she wants to be, but thinks he's coldly indifferent to her. Oh Jane ! How wrong you are!

See, Don Blake is madly in love with Jane, but he's afraid she would reject him because he's "a cripple". Yeah, Don, what girl could possibly look past that limp of yours to see the handsome, young doctor who can afford a private practice in Manhattan?

Showing that Thor is not the only hero in this comic, Dr. Blake volunteers to go to the war-torn Central American nation of San Diablo (Saint Devil?? Yeah, THAT's likely) to provide medical relief. Before Don and Jane can even arrive, however, their ship is attacked by Commie jet fighters who want to stop the "Yankee doctors" from providing aid and comfort to the Democratic forces. If you were having any doubts, yes, this WAS scripted by Larry Lieber.

Don transforms into Thor and smashes the Commie jets. He then changes to his "rightful self " of Don Blake under water -See? I told you two weeks ago he wasn't supposed to really be Thor!- and calls for help from the ship. After Don is rescued, Jane begins to think about how handsome that Thor guy was.

When the medical team from the U.S. finally arrives in San Diablo, they are once again targeted by the Communist forces of "The Executioner".

Note: this Executioner is just a beret-wearing Che Guevara look-alike, not the Asgardian of the same name from later Thor comics.

Commie guerrillas attack the medical convoy, only to be stopped by a violent thunderstorm summoned by Dr. Blake and his magic stick. Once the weather clears and the convoy resumes, the commies send in tanks.

Blake once again changes to Thor and smashes up the entire tank squad, only to learn that Jane Foster was captured in the melee. Jane is taken back to Commie headquarters where Comrade Executioner tries to put the moves on her. He is interrupted by news that his men have caught another Yankee- Dr. Don Blake. The Executioner takes Blake's stick and orders him shot as a spy, but Jane says she'll do anything if Blake is set free. The Executioner says he will let Blake go if Jane will marry him (if that's not a euphemism, I don't know what is).

Blake challenges the Executioner to a one-on-0ne fight, then tricks him into tossing away the magic cane, which Don catches and immediately transforms to Thor.

Thor mops the floor with the Commies and the Executioner is caught by his own men trying to make off with all their funds (in big, Scrooge McDuck-style bags with "$" on them!) and meets his fate at the hands of his own death squad. All the Commies have an immediate conversion to Democratic ideals and Don and Jane get to treat the sick and injured.

We close with Jane asking Don where he went when Thor showed up. Don tells her he hid behind the execution wall, planting the seed in Jane's mind that she wishes Don was more like Thor. Dames!

Happy Guy Fawkes' Day

Remember, remember
The Fifth of November.
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
We see no reason why
Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot!

Superman is a selfish jerk -Action Comics #252

You would think that being Superman's only surviving relative would be a sweet deal. Not So. Poor Supergirl-last survivor of Krypton's Argo City- is not greeted with the warm welcome you'd expect.



Let's back up a minute here. This all starts when Superman (using his Telescopic Vision) spots a rocket crashing to Earth outside of Metropolis. Upon arriving to investigate, he finds that the rocket was carrying a lone passenger: a girl in a dress that looks like his Superman costume. The girl explains that she is Kara, Daughter of Superman's uncle Zor-El. She was born in Argo City, a Kryptonian city that was hurled, intact, into space when Krypton exploded. Unfortunately, the chunk of Krypton Argo City sat on began to turn into the poisonous element Kryptonite.

To ensure his daughter's safety, Zor-El built a small rocketship and sent her to the primitive planet, Earth, which he had been observing through his "Super-Space Telescope". Having seen Superman and overheard radio broadcasts stating that he had come from Krypton, Zor-El decided the best course of action was to dress his daughter up like Superman...so he would know she came from Krypton...

So, once Supergirl explains this to Superman they figure out that they're actually first cousins. Does Supes take her in?? Of course not! That might somehow jeopardize his all-important secret identity. So he slaps a wig on her and sends her to an orphanage.


Yeah, 'cause no brunette girl could possibly be from outer space!


Superman insists that Kara refrain from being Supergirl publicly, asking her to wait in reserve as a "secret weapon". In an orphanage. Way to go, Superman. Good lookin' out there.

I have to say that Clark Kent adopting his orphaned cousin would not be a big clue that he was Superman. Even if he allowed Supergirl to go public (which, remember, he's not going to do) , Lois Lane is not that bright. I mean, if a pair of glasses keeps her from recognizing Clark Kent as the love of her life, a wig ought to make recognition downright impossible.

Also, Superman has a whole friggin' secret Kryptonian hideout at the North pole, the Fortress of Solitude (see Silver Age Man-Caves). Why can't Supergirl stay there? Why does she have to be all sad and lonely in an orphanage??

Despite his public image as a selfless hero, in his personal life, Superman looks out for Superman first.

You Named Her. Now Deal With It. a rant

I've noticed a sad trend in the last several years. I think I first noticed it when Fox Kids was airing that sub-par X-Men cartoon from Saban. And then, when the better-than-I-ever-dreamed feature film came out, it happened again. There were the X-Men, a jumble of old and new. The stalwart Cyclops, the tempestuous Storm, the ubiquitous Wolverine. And Jean Grey.

Wait a second. Jean Grey? So, everybody from Night Crawler to Professor X has a cool, superhero handle and this chick's name is Jean Grey? Kinda sticks out, right? Well, there's a reason for that. She used to have a superhero name. It was Marvel Girl. Now, I don't know if somewhere along the way the folks at Marvel thought that the name was too goofy, or that it was too childlike for their ultimate taking-itself-too-seriously mutant soap opera, but simply calling her by her civilian name got MY attention.

Marvel Girl, you have a great superhero name in a fine tradition of silver age naming conventions. Be proud, be loud, OWN that name!! You go, Marvel Girl!