Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!
...OR: "SECRET SHAMES
OF THE SILVER AGE OF COMICS"
(PART TWO)
"How much worse," you ask...?
This much worse. 
"The Super-Monkey From Krypton" (a title which, really -- when you get right down to it -- pretty much says it all, right there, doesn't it?) opens up as follows: "One day, at the Smallville Zoo, where Mom and Dad Kent have taken their adopted son, Clark..."
"Ha, ha!" the good-natured "Pa" chortles boisterously. "That monkey is hanging by his tail while eating that box of popcorn I gave him!" ("Pa" Kent was -- in essence -- a gentle soul, and found endless amusement in the simpler things in life. Which explains "Ma" Kent, come to think.)
"I'll snap a picture of him, Dad!" son Clark volunteers, inexplicably, whilst cradling what appears to be a small toaster of some sort.
(They kept taking him and taking him there...
but the zoo-keepers always told them: "Hell, no. You
adopted him; you raise him.")
"Hmmmm," "Pa" muses. "Does that remind you of anything that happened long ago, when you were Superbaby, son?"
"That Krypto is a damned liar!" a tearful Clark shrieks, by way of response. "He wanted it! You know he wanted it! Always rubbing up against my legs like that! You always take his side, damn you -- !"
(Okay. Just a little test, there, is
all. Some of you still looked a wee bit dazed and uncomprehending, after
that whole unfortunate "super-gopher" thing.)
"Yes, Dad," Clark responds, grinning. "When I was Superbaby, a Super-Monkey imitated me! It was not until years after it all happened that I solved the full mystery of where he came from."
(Well, cripes... I could have told Superboy
that much, at least. Take one truly desperate comics writer,
staring one king-sized deadline smack in the kisser; add eight or ten
bottles of "Wild Turkey"; leave unattended for twenty-four hours; and -- voila!)
"I learned the story by flying faster than light, far out into space," the teen continues... and we cut (transitional panels are for sissies) to a shot of the costumed Superboy doing precisely that.
"If I overtake the light rays that left Earth years ago," the Boy of Tomorrow helpfully informs the reader, "I'll be able to see past events as they happened! I want to find out how that super-monkey first appeared on Earth!"
(I'm going to take
a wild, desperate stab, here, and hazard a guess that this story was
not, in fact, penned by the late Isaac Asimov.)
It turns out that Superboy's long-perished Kryptonian
Scientist Daddy, Jor-El, had been in the habit of allowing his
"test animals" comparatively free reign throughout the "El" household... and: that one of said animals (a monkey, in this instance) had managed
to secret itself aboard Li'l Baby Kal's getaway rocket ship merest instants
before The Big "K" self-destructed its silly futuristic self. (Obviously,
this monkey was not a sitting member of Krypton's "Science Council."
Just as obviously: he probably should have been.)
We watch (along with Superboy) as the nameless young primate "grows up" under Earth's yellow sun, possessing the exact same compliment of super-powers as does the fabled Boy of Steel his own bad self.
("Animal with funny
nose almost step on my coconuts!" the monkey thinks, at one point.
"Me throw him away into a waterhole!" You just know that
this is one pachyderm who's gonna take up some way serious boozing,
after an experience as mind-boggling and unnatural as that one.
I'm just sayin', is all, here.)
"One day" (our teen narrator blithely continues), "looking around the world with his telescopic vision, Super-Monkey happened to look into my backyard, in Smallville."
While the image of
"Pa" Kent standing, nekkid, in the middle of his corn field, holding aloft the
severed head of a local transient and chanting captures the young primate's
wandering interest for a brief moment or two... it is the sight of a young,
red-and-blue-playsuited Superbaby, frolicking merrily about, which occasions
the primitive thought: "Me go play with flying baby!"
[See panel reproduction, below]
Okay: from here on in, campers... the pain gets Really, Really Intense.
Trust me: you'll all be bloody begging
for more Super-Gophers, before we're done with this one.
Unnoticed by a perfectly oblivious Superbaby, the Primate of Power (if you will) super-sneaks his way over to where the former is busily splashing about in his wading pool, and scores his own red-and-blue playsuit, in imitation of his newfound idee fixe.
"Me wear bright clothes, just like baby!"
the Action Ape enthuses, inwardly. "Me make hole in pants, for
tail!" (Imagine his shock to discover there already was
one...)
"Then" (we're back to Superboy-as-Narrator, again, here), "because I had super-lungs, and did not have to breathe air like other humans, I played 'submarine' with myself..."
(Y'know... we used
to call that sort of thing something else, back when I was but
a lad. And most of us didn't start out "playing" that particular
game anywhere near as earlier as ol' Onan the Barbarian, here.
I guess it's true what they say about farm boys, then...)
Seeking to further emulate his new role model, the
Monkey of Might cannonballs his hirsute way into an awaiting bathtub within
the Kent household... and experiences, in turn, a side of "Pa" that even "Ma"
Kent seldom gets to enjoy any more.
"I caught a glimpse of a blue-and-red costume,"
a coldly furious "Pa" thinks to himself; "... so I know who the culprit
is!" He scolds the innocent (and very, very confused) Superbaby,
and stalks off to... I dunno... go and kick a heifer to death, or something.
The Super-Monkey's next brain-drizzle is occasioned by the sight of (as Superboy reliably informs us) "... an old-time organ grinder who lived in Smallville, [and] was making his rounds." (I'm trying to imagine a small, rural town anywhere in the 1950's which might conceivably support a Professional Organ Grinder. Maybe if we all tried imagining it together...
(... well: all right. Maybe not,
then.)
Observing how all of the town's residents happily surrender their own hard-won subsistence-level agrarian coinage to the happy-go-lucky organ grinder (all the while muttering, doubtless, something along the lines of: "Jeezus, Tony... can't you just go and find a bloody job, like everyone else, f'chrissakes...?"), Super-Monkey super-swipes a cookie jar full of loose change right out from under "Ma" Kent's bespectacled nose, and promptly dumps the entire contents of same into his fuzzy cousin's proffered tin cup.
Once again, the drop-jawed
Superbaby gets busted for the criminal malfeasance of his unseen "playmate."
("They think me... me bad boy...!" the Infant Incredible sobs,
inwardly. "How all this happen?" Yes: it's the Tot
of Tomorrow's first ever experience with the philosophical concept of
Existential Despair! A "must-have," double-bag collector's item!)
Events might well have have proceeded along this storytelling path for.. oh, weeks and weeks, anyway (given that Super-Monkey was -- demonstrably -- the brightest banana in this particular bunch), had not the Simian of Steel finally chosen to make his primeval presence known to the Pre-Adolescent Powerhouse.
The two of them --
monkey and moppet -- bicker and squabble over possession of various and
sundry playthings (a fire truck; a toy trumpet; etc.), inadvertently demolishing
each of them, in turn. Eventually -- frustrated beyond all childish endurance
by the visitor's simian selfishness -- Superbaby attempts to dig his
way towards (comparative) sanity; a reflexive response with which the readers
of this nit-witted tale, certainly, could well and readily empathize.
Taking the opportunity to steal away once Super-Monkey
has (finally) settled down for a peaceful little mid-afternoon snooze, Superbaby
ponders as to how best to rid himself of his hirsute house guest. ("How
me ever get rid of monkey pest?" he mused, in his patently ludicrous
faux infant-ese. "Even if me tell Dad... he can't
help!" Which seems a fairly harsh assessment, really; given that its coming
from someone who can't even get a halfway decent handle on that whole "personal
pronouns" thing.)
As Dame Fortune (that
senile old biddy) would have it, "Pa" is just toting a rather large-ish box
of fireworks and suchlike into the garage at that precise moment.
(Look... if he says it's a crop...)
Superbaby chances across his adopted parent just as the latter is fumbling arthritically for a match for his cigar. Eager to win his way back into his father's good graces once more, Superbaby uses his heat vision to light "Pa's" stogie...
... just in time for his Evolutionarily- Challenged Evil Twin to espy the moment... and elect to mimic it, in turn.
Tragically, the resultant mass detonation of so many suspect and shoddily-constructed gunpowder gimcracks does not in a spectacularly gory splattering of charred, smouldering monkeyflesh all over the greater half of Smallville. (Darn that "Comics Code," anyway!)
It does, however, succeed in causing a certain
panicky, bleating lower life-form to high-tail himself the holy heck
outta Dodge City. (Thankfully, a solicitous Superbaby was able to catch
up with "Pa" Kent before the latter managed to decently clear the Kansas state
line.)
"So alarmed was the Krypton [sic] monkey" (Superboy informs us, in closing), "he fled straight up into space!"
"Evidently" (the "present-day" Clark informs his parents, in gleeful summation), "he got lost in space, and couldn't find his way back to Earth." [Insert Whimsical Chuckling Here]
Of course, we -- the readers -- all know full well that the semi-sentient simian most assuredly did survive the rigors of interstellar space; and did, some years later, stage a triumphant entertainer's return to our planet...
... but: we can discuss the cinematic oeuvre
of Pauly Shore some other time, if you like.
There, now. That wasn't so good,
was it...?
Be here bright'n'early next week, my jolly little spaceketeers... and we'll take a long, horrified gander at yet another two or three inconceivably rotten comics; tales so mind-numbingly awful that they could grow hair on glass, and make a blind dog stagger backwards.
Superboy. Superman. Lois Lane. Lois Lane. The Legion of Super-Heroes. The Batman (and Robin). The Metal Men. The Teen Titans. The Joker. Prez. (... and maybe a few other surprises, to boot, before this entry is all said and done with.)
Welcome To My Nightmare.
"The 12 Silliest DC Comics Ever Published": PAGE ONE
"The 12 Silliest DC Comics Ever Published": PAGE THREE
"The 12 Silliest DC Comics Ever Published": PAGE FOUR
"The 12 Silliest DC Comics Ever Published": PAGE FIVE
"The 12 Silliest DC Comics Ever Published": PAGE SIX
"The 12 Silliest DC Comics Ever Published": PAGE SEVEN
"The 12 Silliest DC Comics Ever Published": PAGE EIGHT
"The 12 Silliest DC Comics Ever Published": PAGE NINE
"The 12 Silliest DC Comics Ever Published": PAGE TEN
"The 12 Silliest DC Comics Ever Published": PAGE ELEVEN
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