Unca Cheeks Silver Age Comics Site: Slow12 Silliest DC Comics Stories 13

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THE 12 SILLIEST DC COMICS EVER PUBLISHED
...OR: "SECRET SHAMES OF THE SILVER AGE OF COMICS"
(PART ELEVEN)

This column was made possible by the matchless generosity of longtime site regular and mini-comics maestro J. KEVIN CARRIER. He's my heeeeeero.)

This comic book...

... this comic book...

... this comic book is to the baseline storytelling verities as Return To Gilligan's Island is to King Lear.

This comic book is a shadow on a biopsy x-ray. It is a live wharf rat, merrily paddling the length of a wedding punch bowl. It is a trenchcoated stranger, slouching in the shadows of a grade school playground.

It's just a big ol' four-color stinkyburger, is what it is.

"The Outsiders" [FIRST ISSUE SPECIAL #10; January, 1976; Joe Simon, writer; Jerry Grandenetti, penciler] opens with a shot of some grotesque, weirdly misshapen freaks hunkered about an oversized television monitor.

(No, no, you big sillies: this has absolutely nothing whatsoEVER to do with "NHL Party Night" at Todd McFarlane's house...!)

"One of our brothers is in trouble!" a plump, good-sized "Kermit the Frog"-lookalike observes. "Listen!"

"Here's another bulletin on the freak terrorizing the town of Lynnville," the television announcer helpfully exposits. (This was, you see, during the period of peak popularity of that DC Comics meta-fictive staple: "The All-Rampaging Hell-Beast Network." Hourly updates on the various fanged and slavering beasties which routinely rampaged their ravenous ways through Metropolis, Gotham City and the like; gushing celebrity "profiles" on the more notorious nightgaunts; "Win a Date With Gorgarr" contests; stuff like that, there. Sort of the "CNN" of the spandexed set.)

Well! With a hey-nonny-nonny and a hot-cha-cha, the asymmetrical assemblage -- "Doc Scary"; "Lizard Johnny"; "The Amazing Ronnie"; "Hairy Larry"; and "Mighty Mary" -- agitate and avaunt themselves in the general overall direction of the aforementioned Lynnville, in order that they might therefore do courageous battle...

... on the part of the rampaging creature!

"They're creatures of the Devil!" one panic-stricken townsperson ululates at the sight of our malformed meta-heroes. (Obviously, a long-time comics reader, already familiar with the Joe Simon/Jerry Grandenetti team's earlier PREZ and GREEN TEAM offerings.)

"Wipe 'em out!" another one exhorts, punctuating said command with a blast from his Daisy (tm) air rifle. "The world'll be better off without them!" (Not that much the same argument couldn't have been offered -- and every bit as convincingly, mind -- for the runs entire of [say] X-FACTOR; LOBO; KISS: THE PSYCHO-CIRCUS; and Ron Marz's dreadful GREEN LANTERN. But: "One man's syphilis is another man's gonorrhea," and all of that...)

The disfigured do-gooders wade into the crowd; appendages of various shapes and sizes a-flailing. The Amazing Ronnie (f'rinstance) is forearmed with four arms (as well as one single, Cyclopean eye, smack-dab in the center of his forehead); the legless Hairy Larry tootles about in his li'l mechanized go-cart, smashing unsuspecting kneecaps with a cheery sort of aplomb; and the lumbering Mighty Mary lurches from opponent to opponent, hugging them into submission (!!).

After sending the brutalized townsfolk scurrying in all directions, the "Outsiders" (the team's collective nom de guerre) stand alongside the creature they've rescued -- a jumbo-cranium'd child by the name of "Billy" -- and engage in the following dialogue:

HAIRY LARRY: "Now that that's over, our readers are probably wondering who we are." (In actual point of fact: this reader clearly recollects puzzling, at the time: "... I actually coughed up a whole quarter for this --?!?")

MIGHTY MARY: "So what's the story, Larry?"

... to which Larry obligingly responds [Pick One]:

A.) "It's the story of a lovely lady, who was bringing up three very lovely girls. After the Apocalypse."

B.) [puzzled expression; struggles with the unfamiliar concept]: "... 'story'...?"

C.) "Budget-wise, Mary: we could afford either a genuine, honest-to-

God plot... or: these here costumes. And: given that nobody in their right mind would ever wanna see you butt-nekkid..."

D.) "One which makes O.J. Simpson's seem convincing, by way of comparison."

E.) "We're the issue of BOY'S RANCH Joe Simon always dreamed of writing one day, dammit -- !"

Alas and alackaday, however: it was, in actual point of fact (oh, I'm just so darned naughty!), none of these. Instead, we are treated (much as your average hooker, say, is "treated" to a brisk, old-fashioned pimp- slapping) to a series of quickie "origin" vignettes for the various Outsiders... with that of the aforementioned "Lizard Johnny" doing the inaugural honors.

After having been dredged from the cruel and unforgiving seas by an anonymous fisherman, the infant Johnny is turned over to a nearby island research institute, where a quick'n'dirty examination by the resident lab boys results in his officially being designated as a whatthehellisit.

"We've got to put an end to it! Now!" one of the white-smocked wunderkinds rages, hefting a handy meat cleaver. "It's the merciful thing to do!"

"No! You can't!" the other scientist -- named (unfortunately enough) "Doctor Goodie" -- objects, attempting to wrest the implement from his fellow savant. "It's one of God's creatures!" (Well, yeah... but: which god...?)

Well: one thing leads deplorably to another, and The Really Mean Scientist ends up with a meat cleaver somewhere in the general vicinity of his thorax. "Doctor Goodie" (oh, that name -- !) lovingly bundles up the mewling Johnny, and steals away into the night.

Shortly thereafter, in a dingy "love-by-the-hour" motel...

No, no: juuuussssssssst kidding.

We cut, instead, to an old tailor's shop; owned and operated by an old tailor. Two street toughs -- for reasons never rendered either lucid or convincing, really -- take it into their adamantine noggins that said old duffer must be sitting on one heck of a massive secret wad o'cash (which would certainly help to explain why a man elects to spend his days hunched over other people's pants; increasingly arthritic fingers shakily maneuvering a needle. I'm just sayin', here, really...)

Forcing their way inside, the evil street entrepreneurs confront the wizened geezer, demanding that he hand over the (imaginary) moolah, A.S.A.P. This, of course, places the latter in a rather unenviable position, imminent mortality-wise.

As it turns out, however: the aged gent does have an interesting little something-or-another squirreled away in the back room... and it isn't several waist-high stacks of Oscar Wilde's Two-Fisted Tales, either.

It's anyone's guess, really, how the creature known as "Billy" manages to pull that shirt over the weather balloon he's been using in place of a head... but: such considerations as these are of secondary import to the frightened, backpedaling pair of gunsels, as they are confronted by a cranium so gargantuan and gape-inducing, it all but qualifies as this solar system's tenth planet.

(It's worth pointing out, at this juncture -- and I've only just now realized what a thoroughgoing and inexcusable "free ride" I've been granting the gentleman in question -- that penciler Jerry Grandenetti's contributions to the ongoing meta-fictive festivities are no special treat either, God wot. Here -- as in his earlier collaborative efforts with Mr. Simon [PREZ and THE GREEN TEAM] -- no figure is competently posed or rendered when a hasty or half-hearted sketch might just as readily suffice. "Proportion"...? "Perspective"...? Just two more words beginning with the letter "p," so far as this geriatric journeyman is concerned.)

(Let's put it this way: it isn't even good fanzine art.)

"That ugly head -- !" one of the would-be Artful Dodgers exclaims, whacking energetically at Little Billy's noggin with a handy 2'x4'. "It's thicker than a steel door!" (Now there's a "super- power" for you...!)

"Daddy!" Billy warbles, lumbering his way inexorably forward. "What have you done to my Daddy?" (Apparently, all of that extra room Billy has "upstairs" is just wiiiiiiiide open spaces... ifyouknowwhatimean...)

A kerosene lamp is introduced to the floorboards; the tailor shop goes up in flames like Chinese "flash" paper; and a smouldering, shrilly- bleating Billy staggers his way towards the nearby waterfront; annnd --

... it's time for The Doctor Goodie Show once more! [Featuring: The June Taylor Dancers! This week's special guest-stars: William Frawley... Ruth Buzzi... Nancy Kulp... and Richard Deacon, in a touching, toe-tapping one-man tribute to the musical career of Billy Idol! "That's... Ennnntertainmennnnnnnt -- !"]

Actually, it's even more unspeakable than that: after a disastrous manned exploration flight to the planet Mercury goes horribly awry, Doctor Goodie's spacecraft limps its bedraggled way back to Earth...

... but: not before the never-seen inhabitants of said planet have amused their alien selves by playing a quick game of '52 Card Pick-Up" with the good Goodie's facial features. Just... like... for "kicks," apparently.

(... y'know... if the various segments of this so-called "story" were any more disjointed, I'd be reviewing three or four different comics, here...)

(... and yes, yes, oh yes, for pity's sake! Your Unca Cheeks is perfectly well aware that attempting to follow the [*kaff*kaff*] "plot" to The Outsiders is somewhat akin to seeking out a really kickass guitar riff on your standard Celine Dion CD. Believe me: I'm not "skipping" much of anything here, really; certainly no more than I "skip" over secondary storytelling details in any other recounting, at any rate. The damned thing actually is every last little bit as scrambled and incoherent as it seems to be.)

"Obviously, they [the aliens] didn't feel that appearance was important," opines a George C. Scott lookalike, during Goodie's convalescence in the military hospital.

"I have another theory, General," a pensive Goodie volunteers. "The creatures that operated on me -- " [Pick One]:

A.) " -- didn't know what an Earthling looked like... so they made me over... in their image!"

B.) " -- went way, waaaaaaay overboard with the complementary 'herbal face mask' treatment. And just wait until you see what they did to my @#$%ing toenails --!"

C.) " -- figured that any guy named 'Goodie' was just pretty much asking for it, really."

D.) " -- were just the zaniest li'l outer space scamps! Those darned playful pixies -- !"

E.) " -- were drunk out of their freakin' minds!"

Well: we cut yet again (why hope for any narrative coherence now, for pity's sake? The book only has three pages left to go, by this point), and it's several years later still... with a (suddenly; inexplicably) "hunky" Doctor Goodie making his appointed medical rounds in a major metropolitan hospital.

"How do you feel today, Miss Bobbins," the [now-]handsome healer inquires of one particularly lithesome patient, in particular.

"Wonderful, Doctor," the patient purrs, by way of reply. "I'm in love... hopelessly in love... with you!"

"Damned shame you're terminal, then, ain't it?" the good Doctor shoots back, an impish twinkle in one eye. "Otherwise, I'd do ya. Seriously. I mean... you're pretty blamed hot, for a corpse what doesn't even know it's dead, yet. I'm talkin' serious 'sheet sandwich,' here!"

Lookit: you damned well knew what this site was like long, loooonnnnnng before you got to this particular page, awright...?

Actually, it seems as if darned near everyone is lining up for a chance to play a quick round of "Naughty Nursie" with the cleft-chinned and tousle-headed Doc Goodie. Not only do we get to watch, enviously, as he fends off the overheated attentions of nurse "Donna" ("I love you! You're brilliant... famous... and the handsomest man in the world!") (Apparently, there was a vote); but we discover, as well, that there's persistent hospital scuttlebutt to the effect that he's "keeping a gorgeous woman" down in the depths of his "mysterious private quarters, twenty stories below the hospital (!!)."

(... geez... and you thought your HMO was Weird City...!)

A quick super-duper-secret-elevator ride downstairs with the Doctor, however, reveals all of the following (and, for once, I'm not making anything up as I go along. Hell... I don't have to, this time):

A.) Doc Goodie's pleasingly perfect facial features are -- in actuality -- a miracle of modern plastics. His true appearance is still as it was, back when his luckless space capsule first splashed down, post-Mercury mission. (What this says about the comparative observational abilities of all the other [supposedly] trained and professional "doctors" and "nurses" in this hospital, of course...

(... well: the phrase "mail order diploma mill" comes to mind, for some reason...)

B.) The "secret" Ol' Lasagna Face is keeping so Eyes Only, hush-hush down below isn't "a gorgeous woman"; it's a damned ugly one [Mighty Mary]... plus all of the other members of DC's "X-MEN Lite": The Outsiders. [See panel reproduction, below]

C.) Whatever in God's name possessed artist Grandenetti to cobble up a spandexed costume for the humongous-headed "Billy" was -- in pained retrospect -- the sort of deranged impulse for which people are normally placed under padded observation, and treated to a steady diet of Prozac milkshakes.

More than practically any other character(s) or concept in the history of the DC canon -- more than STRANGE SPORTS STORIES; more than BROTHER POWER, THE GEEK, or infamous '80's disasters SONIC DISRUPTORS and SILVERBLADE; more, even, than the Simon and Grandenetti team's earlier, notorious THE GREEN TEAM and PREZ -- The Outsiders ranks, in my estimation, as the single most inexplicable series notion ever given the green light by ANY of the company's editors. I mean: how could anyone possibly have scoped out the pages to this gawdawful mess, prior to publication, and thought to himself: "... oh, yeah... this one is certified sales gold, bay-beeee"...?

Next week's final entry in this series of The 12 Silliest DC Comics Ever Published may well be every bit as deliriously goofy as this one, in its own meta-fictive way...

... but -- I guaranbloodytee it -- it won't come within five hundred country miles of being as laughable; lame; and/or inept.

Be here, though.

It'll give your kindly ol' Unca Cheeks a much-sought opportunity to indulge in two of his Very Fav'ritest Obsessions, at the very same time.

Be afraid.

Be very, very afraid.

"The 12 Silliest DC Comics Ever Published": PAGE ONE

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