Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
by T. Campbell
Roy Thomas has a dark secret.
Roy’s reputation lies mostly on his status as comics’ premier "historian/writer." At Marvel Comics, he consistently deepened and enriched the Avengers’ background, and featured prominent roles for Golden Age characters like Captain America, the original Human Torch (who became the Vision under Roy’s tenure) and the Sub-Mariner. He also re-created The Invaders, Marvel’s only Golden Age superteam.
Probably the definitive Roy Thomas book, though -- the one that’s most uniquely Roy Thomas -- is the All-Star Squadron. Once again, Roy invoked, evoked, and IMPROVED UPON the characters he so loved when he first began reading comics; while creating new characters that could stand shoulder to shoulder with the "originals."
A lot of writers who fancy themselves "comics historians" believe that they can get a cool story by bringing back a character who got three lines in UNCANNY X-MEN #167. (And to all you nimrods who are digging through your X-MENs right now to see who I might be talking about: get BACK here! I selected the number at random, okay? I might as easily have said X-MEN #109.)
(STOP that --!) 
When Roy brought a historical reference into his comics (which is to say, pretty much all the time, on average) you could expect two things: the fact would be FORGOTTEN by the majority of current readers… not hard when you consider it… and SIGNIFICANT.
Always significant.
Except once.
One time, he simply went slightly INSANE.
It began innocently enough.
It began with DC COMICS PRESENTS #34 (surely the most GENERIC title for a comic that DC has ever tried. I mean, what does this tell us? "This comic is made by DC Comics, and now we present it." It’s not even hype, like "ALL-STAR COMICS" or genre-specific, like "YOUNG HEROES IN LOVE." It appears to be one degree away from a purely honest title, "TEAM-UP COMICS THAT WILL SELL BECAUSE SUPERMAN IS IN THEM." With that in mind, continue…)
Roy must have been feeling pretty good about his job security around then, because he decided to resurrect the one Golden Age superhero LEAST suited to a team-up with Superman (if you overlook a few historical curiosities even Roy won’t touch, like "KKK Man," "Super- Roosevelt," and "Tijuana-Bible Tawna")…
Hoppy, The Marvel Bunny.
A funny-animal version of Captain Marvel, with magic word and everything.
I’m serious, dammit.
Along with a storyline too silly even for THIS website --
[UNCA CHEEKS' INTERRUPTION: Oh. Yeah. That'll
be the day.]
-- DCCP#34 included a brief vision of an alternate Earth (DC characters were practically traveling to alternate Earths to go to the BATHROOM, back then). This alternate Earth featured animal versions of slightly familiar characters: "Super-Squirrel," "Wonder Wabbit," and… and… oh, just see for yourself:
Even historian Roy couldn't have expected what happened next. On the basis of the relative popularity of this ONE PANEL, DC publisher Jennette Kahn and editorial director Joe Orlando decided that what the nation really NEEDED was a set of funny-animal versions of the already-not-terribly-plausible established superhero "greats."
Roy, along with Gerry Conway and his fiancee Dannette (let’s spread the blame around a bit more), rapidly developed SUPER-SQUIRREL AND THE SUPER-ANIMAL SQUAD. They had engaged veteran animator Scott Shaw to design the characters, and reserved another slot in (*cough cough*) DC COMICS PRESENTS to introduce them…
…when the very same editorial board that had rushed the project into production brought it to a screeching halt.
You see, Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, the Flash, Green Lantern, and, yeah, even Aquaman had their names and faces licensed to various media companies. (Warner Brothers has the film rights to Batman, CBS has the TV rights to the Flash, Skippy has the rights to Superman Peanut Butter, etc.)
Long and the short of it was: these companies might feel threatened if DC found itself in a position of selling… I don’t know… a SUPER- SQUIRREL cartoon to the USA Network. Or a jar of SUPER-SQUIRREL walnut butter to Peter Pan.
In other words, it wasn’t the possibility of this comic book’s FAILURE that worried DC executives. It was the danger of the comic becoming a multi-media SUCCESS.
(Boy… what if they were RIGHT, huh? If SUPER-SQUIRREL had caught fire… Marvel’s best-selling title today might be called THE X- ANIMALS and star Cyclapes, Marmoset Girl, Icepenguin (think of an ice sculpture of Opus from Bloom County), and… um… the Beast and Wolverine. Try to imagine it.
(No. No. On second thought: don’t.)
At this point, though, Roy, Gerry, Dannette, and Scott had invested a little too much time, effort, and –- oh, all right, I’ll give in to sentiment -– HEART into the idea of a "funny-animal super-hero comic-book" to give up on it altogether. As Roy later told it, they were much happier in the end doing what DC had forced them to do: create a set of entirely NEW funny-animal super-heroes.
Well-ll… not ENTIRELY new. Roy was, after all, a historian. Undergoing a mild case of anthropomorphic bats in the belfry…
1981.
TEEN
TITANS was DC’s best-selling comic. George Perez was catching fire for
the first time, with a style more photo-realistic and action-packed than anything
else in its day. Marv Wolfman, spurred on by the comic’s runaway popularity,
was getting more and more daring in his storylines. TEEN TITANS #16 featured
Starfire, an alien Pamela Anderson lookalike in a metal bikini (and no, I’m
not joking; just look at the picture).
TEEN TITANS #16 featured
Starfire getting involved with a gigolo in the employ of a supervillain flunky.
(I’m still not joking).
Said gigolo accomplishes his stated goal of making Starfire fall in love with him. Unfortunately: he falls in love with Starfire, too; tries to walk out on said supervillain flunky; gets shot by flunky; and dies in Starfire’s arms, leaving Starfire with the solitary desire to separate flunky’s esophagus from flunky.
It was a mix of the best and worst of the coming decade: part mature themes handled intelligently, and part grim an’ gritty for grit an’ grimness’ sake. But one thing was clear: it was not a REMOTELY funny story.
It also
featured a 16-page(!) insert, starring the character shown directly below.
..
I’m still not joking, incidentally.
Furthermore: these sixteen pages had a plotline that could have confounded Dostoyevsky. To sum up as best we can:
Mystery rays are coming out of the sky, causing humans to revert to apelike behavior. Superman, bright guy that he is, deduces the rays are coming from the planet Pluto and flies off to investigate.
Out there he encounters a strange "space barrier," which blocks anyone attempting to fly through empty space; and (apparently) dulls their mental faculties so they don’t think to fly around it.
Supes finds the barrier impervious to a frontal assault, so he picks up an asteroid and plows it through the barrier. The result not only knocks him for a loop but (I swear this is true) sends radioactive meteor fragments hurtling down through Earth’s atmosphere.
It gets even better. Apparently the other side of the space-barrier is an (breath) ALTERNATE EARTH, one populated entirely by anthropomorphic animals…
…or "funny animals," as Superman quite insensitively labels them. Sort of like the Vulcans beaming down to Earth and saying, "Where’s the intelligent life? All I see here are a bunch of ‘silly-humans!’"
As Superman begins to mix in this world, he discovers that:
A.) This planet is likewise being bombarded with mystery rays from space, and its inhabitants are likewise being reverted to primitive states.
B.) Those meteor fragments, which HE HIMSELF is responsible for, are interacting with the animals of this Earth and giving them bizarre super-powers.
Given this state of affairs, Superman, policeman to the entire multiverse, the greatest hero any Earth has ever known, elects to clean up his own backyard first and leave the little funny animals to fend for themselves. As an afterthought, he promises to come back "as soon as I’ve finished… in the universe of Earth-One." You know. The IMPORTANT Earth.
Clearly, any super-heroes produced by the meteors he left behind would have a lot to live up to.
Next time out, we’ll introduce the good Captain and his crew, some of the realities of their world (CAN you date outside your species?); and how that world opened up a seven-year-old’s eyes to a world beyond his imagination.
Join us, won’t you?
It’ll be fun-tabulous.
"MORE COMIC BOOKS," YOU SAY...?
"MORE COMIC BOOKS," YOU SAY...?
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