Unca Cheeks Silver Age Comics Site: 12 Silliest DC Comics Stories 9

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

Now: where were we, before being so rudely interrupted...?

Oh. Right. Really Geeky and Awful Comics.

It's all coming back to me, now

"A Mystical Realm, A World Gone Mad" [TEEN TITANS #32; March, 1971; Steve Skeates, author; Nick Cardy, artist] stands alone -- head and shoulders; towering -- as the single lamest and most staggeringly inept TITANS story ever published, from their very first SHOWCASE appearance to the present day...

... which -- when you stop to consider that said canon also includes such notorious lame-o offerings as the first appearance of the villainous "Ding-Dong Daddy" and the wretched fiction entitled "A Killer Called HoneyBun" -- certainly is quite the impressive little achievement, isn't it...?

The story opens up right smack-dab in the middle of things, with Kid Flash (carrying [then-]recent Titans inductee Mal Duncan in hyper-

accelerative tow) rocketing his way through the time barrier from an as-yet-unspecified collaborative adventure of some sort.

"Well," Mal offers, by way of storytelling preamble. "We sure got out of that mess in time! Now what?"

"Simple," Kid Flash replies (still just a-speedin' away). "I just stop vibrating, and we whiz right back to the 1970's! Hang on! Here we GO!"

As it turns out, however: the '70's are an even uglier decade than any of us might have dared remember, as amply demonstrated by the rather large-ish Big, Green Scaly Monster which promptly attempts to devour our pinheaded pair, upon their emerging from the swirls and colors of the DC timestream and well into corporeal substantiality once more.

"If this is the 1970's," Mal sagaciously observes; "... they sure have changed a lot since I last saw them!" The little smartass.

"You can say that again," Kid Flash replies; and -- if only for the briefest, most illusory of moments -- it looks as if writer Skeates is about to surrender all to the sultry, siren allure of aged and decrepit vaudevillian humor.

Tragically, however: said gentleman had far bigger, stinkier meta- fictive fish to fry.

You see: the reason both Mal and Kid Flash are jointly be-bopping their clueless way through the tunnels of temporia in the first place is that the former had managed, earlier, to blunder his way (in a scene not entirely unreminiscent of the "Lucy-and-Ethel-manning-the-assembly-

line" episode of I LOVE LUCY) into the midst of a super-duper-tip-top-

secret experiment being conducted by the Titans' (then-) adult mentor and resident moneybags, Mr. Jupiter.

Quicker'n you can say "idiot plot device," the hapless Mal is unceremoniously sucked into a gaping temporal anomaly roughly the size of George Wendt's refrigerator... and (with no more fair warning than that): we're off to the races.

Mal finds himself standing, dazed and alone, on a high, windswept patch o' mountainous terrain... and (with no more clues or indicators than that, mind) immediately makes the following cognitive standing broad jump: "Good God! That machine Jupiter was working on! It had something to do with time!"

(Writer Skeates often underwent similarly absurd storytelling contortions, throughout his TITANS tenure, in the thankless [and never ending] quest to rationalize and/or justify why the anything-but- "super" Mal was sharing the same mailing address as the likes of [say] Kid Flash and Wonder Girl. Whereas this was [certainly] a laudable enough goal, racial inclusion-wise... it had the unfortunate [and, doubtless, unintentional] effect of rendering Mal a sort of one-man "Plot Exposition" Teammate, rattling off increasingly lengthy strings of who/what/when/ where and why, ; the team's resident P.E.T., in other words.) [*rimshot*]

Anyhoo: whether achieved via painstaking, Mycroft Holmes-like ratiocination or else merely One Damned Lucky Guess, Mal's working theory is quickly elevated to the status of virtual certainty by the sudden Stage Left entrance of Barney Rubble's ugly half-brother and his assorted beer cronies.

"ULP! Neanderthals!" Mal thinks to himself. "Guess that answers that question! I've gotta get outta here!" (... and go... like... where, dude? Someplace where it isn't the latter part of the Stone Age, locally? Geeeeeeeez -- !)

The unwashed and hirsute cave dwellers, for their part, are all peering intently at the nervous Mal and (doubtless) thinking one of the following:

A.) [dubiously] "... I dunno, Trogg... don't look like no baby brontosaurus I've ever seen; that's for dang sure! You go ahead and take the first bite, dude."

B.) "Yew shore do got a real purdy mouth, stranger. Yup... a reeeeeeal purdy mouth... "

C.) [staring fixedly at Mal's boots] "Jeezus Christ, Herbie... check it out! The poor bastard was born without any freakin' toes -- !"

D.) "Good hips. Will bear many strong children. Karrg wants her."

E.) [resignedly] "Oh, great. There goes the bloody neighborhood...!"

"Then again," Mal observes; "... they don't look like they're planning to attack... or anything like that! They're almost bowing toward me! Look almost reverent! Could it be that they suddenly saw me appear out of thin air -- and -- ?"

... annnnnnnnnnnd: yup. It's venerable Comic Book Cliché #287, in action: "Any 20th century individual who happens to appear in front of a large group of cavemen shall immediately be worshipped; adored; fawned over; and made much of, in direct inverse proportion to their actual knowledge and/or abilities." [See panel reproduction, below]

"Yup!" Mal enthuses inwardly, impressing the assembled troglodytes mightily by demonstrating his native ability to hold his hands together over his head. "They think I'm a god, all right!"

Not even a TEEN TITANS scribe of the era in question could possibly follow up on that with a perfectly straight face... so: it's back to the present day, at this point, where Mal's teammates and adult mentor are sifting through the smoke and rubble of their ruined laboratory in frenzied, futile search of their vanished friend and comrade (or at least some recognizable piece of him, at any rate).

"No sign of him!" a mournful Speedy intones. "Do... do you think he could have been -- ?"

"No!" Kid Flash asserts, decisively. "He wasn't completely transformed into energy... if that's what you're thinking!" (... and you know this for a stone fact how again, O Mister Junior Rocket Scientist, sir...?)

(For that matter: who in their right mind would even leap to such a hopelessly bizarre assumption in the first friggin' place? I mean... have you ever turned on the evening news and listened as your local blow-dried talking head solemnly informed the viewing audience: "There was a massive explosion at the Red Devil Fireworks Factory this afternoon, completely demolishing said site. Several employees are still listed among the missing, as of this hour. Policemen on the scene refused to comment as to whether or not said vanished individuals had been completely transformed into energy or not"...?)

"How can I call myself a scientist?" Mr. Jupiter hammily emotes, sensing an all-but-certain Eisner Award nomination in the offing if he plays his dramatic "cards" right. "I should have known better than to experiment with something this unstable with you kids around! It was complete irresponsibility!" (Mind, now: he's making this particular mea culpa, mea maxima culpa in front of confirmed junkie Roy [Speedy] Harper and future sex maniac Wally [Kid Flash] West. I'm just sayin', is all.)

... annnnnnnd: speaking of uncontrollable sexual urges, our time- tossed Mr. Duncan is also finding himself to be naught but Passion's Plaything, as one of the local cavegirls is busily lobbing some none-too-subtle "come hither" looks his way.

(... and -- incidentally -- check this out: said prehistoric poopsie is cleanly and completely shaven of leg; sports far less simian-like facial features than those of her male counterparts; and has [apparently] made a few early, crucial flint-age discoveries, re: the creation and application of baseline Max Factor products! Boyohboy... site regulars Carmen and Louise are just gonna have themselves a bloody field day with this one, by golly -- !)

"Looks like she wants to hold hands with me, or something!" the ever-intuitive Mal deduces, given such subtle, tell-tale clues as (f'rinstance) the fact that Miss November, 70 Million B.C. is kneeling before him, all submissive and dewey-eyed.

(What do you suppose a prehistoric Playmate's mandatory bio sheet would read like, anyway? "TURN-ONS: Long, romantic strolls through the tar pits; gnawing my way through a mastodon's lower intestine; opposable thumbs. TURN-OFFS: Sabre-tooth tigers; Being KaBonked on the head by some neanderthal and dragged by my hair into his cave; men who say 'Yabba-Dabba-DOO!' at odd and/or inopportune moments. MAJOR GOALS IN LIFE: children; evolution; not being mauled and messily devoured by roving packs of large, blood-crazed velociraptors.")

"Don't really know what holding hands means to these people," Mal muses. "But... I guess it won't hurt!"

Apparently, however: "what holding hands means to these people" is the prehistoric equivalent of Paul McCartney yodeling "Why Don't We Do It In the Road?" circa THE WHITE ALBUM, because one of the resident cave studs takes immediate and extreme exception to same.

Said disapproval takes the form of The First Recorded Instance of a Can O'WhupAss Being Opened, as the loinclothed lothairo proceeds to pretty much kick a frantically backpedaling Mal's hinder all over the place, really...

... and: after being unceremoniously clubbed and drubbed like a playground pigskin for the better part of a page or three, Mal (eventually) finds himself clinging for dear life from the lip of a rocky precipice, staring up into the red, piggish eyes of a seriously torqued-off Yarrgh, Son of Blarrgh (or whatever).

This scene might well have been our first real bit of dramatic tension, thus far -- and as soon as Page Twelve, mind! Fancy that! -- had author Skeates not (stupidly) already punctured that particular meta-fictive balloon by bloody showing us, back on Page One, that Kid Flash had already effected said rescue, courtesy of the ubiquitous "Cosmic Treadmill" of FLASH lore. (And: if a frog had wings, he wouldn't bruise his buns a-hoppin'.)

Instead, things take an extremely odd storytelling "turn" when the normally competent Kid Flash -- demonstrating a hitherto long unsuspected gift for broad, physical comedy -- ends up knocking himself unconscious with the very club he slaps out of the irate troglodyte's meaty, upraised paw (!!).

This, in turn, occasions a sudden, brutal battle to the death between Early Dawn Man and The Earth's Gravitational Field; a set-to which -- while very nearly an interesting one -- ends both predictably and off-panel. (Never a pretty storytelling combination, really.)

Upon regaining whatever he's been utilizing in place of consciousness throughout this story, Kid Flash's first words are a pained, desperate: "Th-that caveman! Going over the cliff! I've got to -- !"

"Take it easy," an eerily phlegmatic Mal counsels. "You've been out for quite awhile! He hit bottom long ago!" (Mal, you see, was the caring, sensitive Titan.)

This brings us full circle, of course, back to our time-tossed Titans; huddled together in a cavern, waiting out the big, hungry dragon-thingie from Page One. (In other words: we've all been "treated" to what is -- essentially -- a thirteen-page-long teaser. TThe real story -- pale, blind and crawling thing that it is -- hasn't even started yet, really.)

Not to worry, however: in lieu of genuine plot, Mr. Skeates has spared no expense in importing great, heaping gobloads of the finest, high grade Expository Comics Gobbledygook that money can buy. So: it wasn't fifteen cents completely wasted, then.

"That caveman who got killed!" Kid Flash explains to his uncomprehending teammate. "That's why we've ended up in this crazy world -- instead of the world we knew! [...] If we hadn't been there, he [the fallen caveman] wouldn't have died! We altered the course of history!"

(... and -- somewhere; upon hearing those words -- Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov spin like dreidels in their respective graves.)

(I mean: one caveman kicks off a week or two earlier than he probably woulda, otherwise... and we get an Earth populated by dragons -- ?!? Oooooooookay.)

(The indica of this comic informs us that the editor in question was one "Murray Boltinoff." And I certainly hope he enjoyed his little two-week vacation that year.)

Resolved, therefore, to journey back yet again to that precise historical moment when two accredited, card-carrying members of one of DC's flagship superteams managed to screw up all of recorded human history... a grim Kid Flash points out that: "... only trouble is, I'm not sure I can get back without the treadmill! Also, Flash warned me if I meet myself in the past [sic], I could be destroyed! I've got to time-trip accurately -- hit that past moment right on the old tick-tock!"

"I dig," that crazy, happenin' Mal replies. "But that means we need help -- special help! Where do we find that... in this place?"

(It seems, at this point, that Kid Flash and Mal require the services of either: a.) a writer; or b.) old Jay Ward character "Mr. Peabody," and his Wayback Machine. Note, if you will, that one is just about as likely to surface unannounced, at this late date, as the other.)

(Actually: I'd be willing to grant you slightly better odds on the talking dog with the glasses and the bow tie.)

Mal and Kid Flash espy a castle in the distance, and set out towards it on the grounds that the residents therein (in the latter teen's own words; I kid you not): "... they could be scientists! And they might know something about time travel! It's a long shot, but still -- !"

As the opening caption on the very next page so breathlessly informs us: "Castle looming! Castle sinister! Titans two; Titans brave -- a primitive life; a world themselves to save! Poetry -- but: it tells it like it is!"

Just makes you wanna dig your own eyes out with a spoon, doesn't it...?

As the pair approaches the castle, they are confronted by a snarling, ravening horde of various and sundry beasties; occasioning, in turn, the following observation on the part of Mal Duncan:

"Wally, like the old honky saying... have I gone white with fear... 'cause I'm really scared, man!?" [sic. sic, sic, sick]

"No, Mal," Kid Flash responds -- resisting the perfectly understandable urge, at this juncture, to inquire as to whether and/or when his former Titans teammate had been temporally replaced by radio comedian Jack Benny's old sidekick, "Rochester" -- "black is still beautiful on you, buddy!"

(DC Comics, you see -- and TITANS scribe Skeates, in particular -- lived in mortal dread, back in the day, that the readers would somehow just... well... forget that Mal Duncan was an African-American, unless said point was piledriven home a bare minimum of three or four times per issue. In the vast majority of instances -- such as the one shown here; and the ones you'll be seeing a little later on, as well -- said "reminders" were as heavy-handed [and deeply offensive] as would have been scenes in which Mal evinced a fondness for fried chicken and watermelon; or a propensity for "natural rhythm." Just so nobody coming across these things for the very first time is caught completely flatfooted and unawares, is all.)

"Place like that has to have a magic-maker," Mal opines; "... like ghetto flats always come with rats!" (See what I mean...?) "But how do we get across that moat -- ?"

Without inflicting any more damage or psychic trauma upon my readers than I have already by detailing their eventual stratagem -- oh, all right; they pole-vaulted over the beasties and into the castle proper. Happy, now? -- we'll jump ahead to the scene in whicch the two Titans confront the owner of said keep: a moons-and-stars-robed Mr. Jupiter!

Calling himself "Jupiterus" [*snicker*] in this cock-eyed reality, the grim mage escorts our heroes into "The Hall of Judgment," where they meet... they meet...

... well: just see for yourselves, kiddies.

For me: it's a toss-up which one's the absolute goofiest-looking of the lot, quite frankly. (Although -- that being said -- anyone whose costume involves a giant boar's head in any capacity probably has more than a decent head start on the nearest competition. I'm just sayin', really.)

"Noble lords," Jupiterus inquires of the four extras from Monty Python and the Holy Grail assembled before him. "These youths have come seeking my mystic aid! Should they gain it so easily -- or earn it so hard?"

"NO! NO!" the freaky foursome all bellow in unison, pounding their massive fists against the table. "THE TEST! PUT THEM TO THE TEST! THE TEST! THE TEST!" (Boy... some "Super-Friends," huh...?)

"Aye," the Knight of the Bat rasps. "In the test lies truth!"

"The test separates the men from the boys," adds the Duke of the Galaxies, helpfully. (Why, O why do I suspect that -- in this castle, at any rate -- the men are generally separated from the boys with a crowbar...?)

"The test -- because we command it!" an impperious Lord of the Lightning insists.

"I'm wearing the hollowed-out head of a friggin' pig," the Thane of the Bow sums up. "I can't even see where I'm walkin' half the time! I crashed into three walls just getting into the room! I @#$%ing hate everybody, awright? Grease the @#$%ing little nancyboys!"

(No, no; he didn't really. Unca Cheeks is just tired, is all.)

Well: with "The Test" proving to be quite the little capacity crowd-

pleaser, Jupiterus waves his silly arms a few times; mumbles something under his breath which sounds suspiciously like "Ooo-Eee, Ooo-Ahh-Aah, Bing-Bang, Walla-Walla-Bing-Bang" --

... and: Titans Speedy and Lilith are ala-kazammed into the room!

But not really. These are, you see, merely two more of this alternate reality's quasi-heroic dopplegangers, if you will: "Trueshot" and "Cerebella," to be precise.

"You, varlet in scarlet," Jupiterus informs Kid Flash, "will face Trueshot in an archery contest! The target -- the keyhole of yon door!"

Trueshot takes the first... ummmmm, shot; and scores big time, placing his shaft smack-dab dead center within the aforementioned keyhole. (Probably thinking of his world's version of Donna Troy, all the while.)

"We're shut out -- zeroed -- SUCKERED, Flasher!" Mal cheerleads, helpfully. "Why shoot? You can't hit a blocked bull's-eye? And if you luck it in -- it's still a tie!"

The Teen Tornado takes his shot, nonetheless, and -- believe it or don't; at this point, I'm way, way too drunk to care -- manages not only to cleave Trueshot's arrow with his own, but puts enough "spin" on his shaft to cause it to turn itself in the lock... opening the door, and revealing --

-- revealing --

... well: you'll all have to turn to the next page in order to see that.

Please gather up your things before making your way into the adjoining auditorium. The management will not be held responsible for any giant boar heads left in your seats or on the floor. Thank you.

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