... otherwise known as the You Killed Jerry Siegel! You BASTARDS! wing of our little online atrocity exhibition.

What the anti-social (and adiposal) Spider habitually lacked in luck, he certainly made up for in sheer grit and determination. A few days after his most recent failure (i.e., Operation: Code Name "Boppo"), the massive mastermind is up to his standard shenanigans yet again: this time, utilizing a --

... well: let's allow the super-villain set's answer to William Conrad to have his own say, just this once, shall we...? :-))

" [...] the emanations from this device can drain most of the energy out of all living organisms... including you! That's why you can't crawl, or fly, off! Notice, too, the moving second hand time-piece attachment! It's counting off the few remaining seconds you have left to live! Enjoy it! When the rotating second hand points directly upward, the atom bomb will explode! And so will you, Fly-Man! So will you!"

A "life-draining" mechanism... and an atomic bomb detonation.

He's a thorough little cuss. Give him that much, anyway.

"But -- " (the next heart-stopping caption exclaims); " -- a split second before the diabolical mechanism can detonate -- !" [Pick One]:

A.) Yet another dorky and deservedly forgotten old ARCHIE Comics super-hero shows up.

B.) Yet another dorky and deservedly forgotten old ARCHIE Comics super-hero shows up.

C.) Yet another dorky and deservedly forgotten old ARCHIE Comics super-hero shows up.

D.) Yet another dorky and deservedly forgotten old ARCHIE Comics super-hero shows up.

Every once in a great while: I feel I owe the lot of you a "freebie" for putting up with all of this.

"The Black Hood... and his robot horse 'Nightmare'!" a stunned Fly-Man marvels. "His ray-gun blast saved me right at the brink of eternity!"

(Good News/Bad News Time, campers and camperettes. The good news: I'm not going to delve into the unspeakable details of the Black Hood's origin, at this point.

(The bad news, on the other hand: same upcoming page as The Shield, bunkies.

(Stop crying.)

"The Fly-Man! The Comet! The Shield! And now, the Black Hood! BAH!" a now thoroughly frustrated Spider rages, shaking one ham-sized fist at the inherent injustice of being forced to endure yet another long, lonely evening of villainus interuptus. "The Earth is getting so darned crowded with super-heroes, I can hardly breathe!" (What this four- color universe really needs is a good, old- fashioned, DC-style CRISIS, by golly!)

"Sensational!", however, is the reaction of the standard man on the street to the news that there's been a city-wide "run" on spandex over the past week or so. "This is going to be a much safer world with all these great Crusaders around!"

(Oh, yeah. Right. The Good Lord alone knows but that Boppo, Flippy and Basher would -- even now -- be ruling the planet in a collective iron grip of sheer, unrelenting terror if not for the ongoing presence of these yipyops. Sure thing. Yoooouuuuu betcha.)

"[The] next day, high in the sky," however: a mysterious, unseen force causes gigantic cloud letters to form, reading: "THIS-A-WAY, SUPER-HEROES! FORM... 'THE MIGHTY CRUSADERS'!"

The three flight-enabled heroes (Fly-Man; the Comet; and the Black Hood) all zip off in the direction indicated by the helpfully provided cloud "arrow," accompanying; and are met "in an abandoned amusement park" by a bemused Shield.

"Hello, fellahs!" the chipper crusader chirrups. "Which one of you put that cloud message up in the wild blue yonder?"

"Not me!" Fly-Man stoutly avers.

"Or me!" the Comet echoes.

"I didn't, either!" the Black Hood concludes. "Neither did my trusty robot steed, Nightmare! He can't spell that good!" (MWAH-ha-ha-ha! Because... see... he's, like, a horse, right? Get it? Huh? "He can't spell that good!" Because he's a horse! Oh, gawd... my sides...!)

(Kill me. Now. Please.)

"Hm-mm," a pensive Fly-Man muses. "Maybe there's still another super-hero lurking around! If he did it, he may join us shortly!" (Not exactly "the Darknight Detective," is he, gang...?)

"Well, whoever did it, it's a great idea," the Black Hood enthuses. "Us guys banding together into an injustice-fighting group!"

"Yes!" the Shield readily agrees. "The Spider's world-wide evil organization is too powerful, too complex, for just one of us to defeat, alone!" Not that you'd ever guess as much from the way these four goobers have been kicking blubbery bad guy butt up and down the block all the livelong day, up to this point. I'm just sayin', really. That's all.)

"Objection!" Fly-Man interjects. "In the first place, that name 'the Mighty Crusaders' is corny, like something dreamed up in a comic book!" (Now "Fly-Man," on the other hand...)

"But, more important," he continues, eschewing modifiers with a manly sort of disdain; "... I'm not convinced you 'super-heroes' are mighty enough to deserve joining up with me!"

This snide expostulation occasions, in turn, the single most welcome and heart-warming scene in the comic entire: the other three Crusaders join forces and proceed to pummel the holy living poo right out of a hapless and ineffectual Fly-Man! (YESSSSSS -- !!)

"Lucky for you I was so busy while patrolling today," the bruised and battered hero snivels, once the dust has settled, "that my powers, which can last for just an hour each day, wore off just now! Otherwise...!"

The other heroes all greet this with the general snorting and derision it so richly deserves, flying off in a chorus of catcalls and wet, juicy raspberries.

Seconds after that: the big, mean clown attacks.

This is a wholly true assessment in not one, but two important respects:

1.) That's our one-man, jumbo-sized jihad, the Spider, waving a Dirty Harry-esque hand cannon in Fly-Man's goggled face; annnnnnd --

2.) He's wearing one of Emmett Kelly's old hand-me-downs. (Not that this isn't necessarily an improvement, mind.)

"Ha, ha!" the corpulent creepazoid exults. "It was I who planted that cloud message in the sky... to bait you toward your death! We're alone, now... you, the weak Fly-Man... me, the all-powerful Spider... and this gun, with which I will kill you!"

"It wasn't simple, conceiving such masterpieces of villainy!" (The "Deal-A-Meal" desperado continues.) "But you always wriggled off the hook, blast you! Things like that could give me a bad name in the underworld! But now my prestige will be mightier than ever! Wait'll word gets around that the Spider destroyed Fly-Man! From the murderous alleys of Hong Kong to the terraces of elegant Park Avenue penthouses -- !"

... well. He just goes on and on and bloody on, doesn't he, though...?

As unalloyed a pleasure as it most assuredly is, however, watching Fly-Man being ruthlessly and resoundingly pimp-slapped into a stupor by a spandexed Dom DeLuise... all good things come to their eventual end, alas.

"Okay, 'King Lear'!" a (suddenly) hale and hearty-seeming Fly-Man growls. "Knock it off! You're a ham, not 'Hamlet'! So muffle the monologue! Bill Shakespeare, you're not!"

(Try as I might: I can't shake the unhappy image of a lonely, desperate Jerry Siegel seated at his battered old typewriter; knocking back shot after feverish shot of cheap rotgut, his mind racing like an amphetamined gerbil on a greased flywheel; wondering "... how in God's name did it ever come to this? How? HOW? HOW -- ?!?")

It turns out, you see, that Fly-Man wasn't power-bereft after all, really; nor was he ever the least little bit unawares that the stupefied Spider was loitering about the amusement park in clownish motley.

"How could that be possible?" the villain splutters, bound and helpless in some hastily-spun Fly-Man "steel-tough webbing."

"What you didn't know, Spider" the hero smugly explains, "was that a real spider, lurking in a cobweb, saw you come and assume that clown- dummy pose! [...] I egged on my friends into a free-for-all, so that I could whisper the news about your secret presence to them, during the scuffle!"

"Fly-Man said he'd pretend the hour during which he could have super-powers was up!" a grinning Shield concludes, sensing (in his uncanny way) that the comic has only one more page to go, in any event.

Doubtless fed up with having wasted his time and energies in support of a story so ineptly engineered as this one, the sulky Spider activates a fail-safe device secreted on his ample person and teleports the heck outa Dodge; leaving the nonplussed paladins to ponder the relative merits of this whole "Mighty Crusader" business, while a waiting world holds its collective breath in eager anticipation.

I don't make the news, people; I just report it, is all.

"Hold it, letterer!" the final caption self-aggrandizingly blares and simpers. "This isn't The End by a long shot! There's something important to decide! Readers, write today! Tell us if "The Mighty Crusaders" should be organized or not! Write: "MIGHTY CRUSADERS" Dept., Radio Comics, Inc., 241 Church Street, New York, N.Y., 10013! Your decision can influence COMICS HISTORY!!!"

All right, then. Unca Cheeks assumes that at least a bare handful of the regular vistors to this site currently reside in the NYC area.

What I want you special, select readers to do for me, please, is this:

A.) Hie thee hence, to 241 Church Street.

B.) Enter the building located thereon.

C.) Make absolutely stone certain there are no survivors.

I think we all owe a gentle, sorely mistreated man by the name of "Jerry Siegel" that bloody much, if nothing else.

Be here bright'n'early next week, kiddies, as we continue our embarrassed, pained examination of the Siegel-written "Mighty Crusaders" characters of the 1960s... with especial emphasis on The Shield; The Black Hood; The Web; and other four-color fancies and failures too dire and awful to long contemplate.

What you've seen, thus far, is the quality stuff, comparatively speaking.

Trust me: you'll all be begging on your hands and knees for more "Boppo," "Flipsy" and "Basher," before this sorry sonata has reached its final coda.

The Archie Comics MIGHTY CRUSADERS of the 1960s: PAGE ONE

The Archie Comics MIGHTY CRUSADERS of the 1960s: PAGE THREE

The Archie Comics MIGHTY CRUSADERS of the 1960s: PAGE FOUR

The Archie Comics MIGHTY CRUSADERS of the 1960s: PAGE FIVE
The Archie Comics MIGHTY CRUSADERS of the 1960s: PAGE SIX

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