Unca Cheeks the Toy Wonder's Silver Age Comics Web Site!

(This page is dedicated -- with admiration and gratitude -- to KERRY. Dial "F" for Friend.)

Every so often... a given comics series will find itself the possessor -- proud, or otherwise -- of the literary equivalent of a "reputation."

Now: reputations are funny ol' things, really. Sometimes, a comic book may end up profiting (just as we occasionally do, here in "the real world") from having a bad "rep."

The infamous (and -- mercifully -- short-lived) 60's DC series BROTHER POWER, THE GEEK, for instance, has benefited hugely (in a perverse sort of way) from precisely this sort of whispers-around-the- gypsy-campfire legend-mongering amongst comics fans.

BROTHER POWER has -- over the ensuing decades, anent its wholly regrettable publication -- acquired something of a "mystique," by now; the same disreputable sort of glamour as that possessed by, say, famed cinematic gobbler PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. In both instances, the curious sidle up alongside the flap of the circus tent to see a freak show; anything not sporting at least two heads is, therefore, something of a let-down.

There are only a handful of such exemplars of egregiousness, within the history of the comics medium. (Oh... there have been any number of Bad Comics published, since that fateful first issue of FAMOUS FUNNIES, back in the 1930's. But: actual ongoing series' which could induce infarction in an ifreet...? Not all that many, thank goodness -- !)

THE GREEN TEAM was one of these; DOUBLE-DARE ADVENTURES ("Starring BEE-MAN -- !!") was another, as was the improbably titled TOD HOLTON: SUPER GREEN BERET.

... and then: there was DIAL "H" FOR HERO.

The writing was abysmal, in every particular.

The artwork -- by veteran comics journeyman Jim Mooney -- was slapdash, and uninspired.

And you wanna know what's really weird...?

I adored it, as a kid...

... and I like it even better, now.

1966.

Over at DC Comics (then better-known as "National Periodical Publications"), the editorial Powers That Be are faced with an ages-old dilemma, within the industry: a comics title with iron-poor sales.

HOUSE OF MYSTERY -- the "elder sister" title to the equally dolorous HOUSE OF SECRETS anthology -- is squatting somewhere near the bottom of the comic book sales hierarchy. Its putative "lead" feature -- a series of numbingly repetitive adventures starring "J'onn J'onzz: the Martian Manhunter" -- doesn't exactly have the readership of the day lined up three deep at the cash registers.

Issue #156... and poor, put-upon ol' J'onn has been relegated to the back

of the book, in favor of a frail, bespectacled adolescent by the alliterative alias of "Robbie Reed."

It seems that -- while spelunking somewhere within the idyllic boundaries of the laconic "Littleville" -- Young Robbie suffers one of those fortuitous strokes of good/bad luck so endemic to the comic book "origin story," proper. An ill-advised misstep sends the luckless lad tumbling glasses-over-teakettle down rather a steeper incline than might otherwise be considered the ideal, and lands him a-sprawl alongside a curious, rune-encrusted artifact [see page, accompanying].

Hurriedly stuffing the mysterious whatsit down the front of his jeans (even glasses-wearing nerdboys may succumb to the desire for a healthy "rep," re: the local populace la femme), Robbie scurries home, and -- in a feat of cryptography certain to elicit admiring gasps and wolf whistles from even the most jaded CIA long-time -- decodes the alien glyphs, revealing the equivalent of eight "letters"... four of which spell out the word H-E-R-O.

Had the fruit of his labors been the letters D-O-R-K, the story might well have found its resolution by page four, and we might all be more profitably engaged in discussion of cold fusion, or whatnot. Instead, however, the nonplused non-entity is startled and amazed to find himself transformed into a boy/giant, whereupon he unhesitatingly christens himself -- in a white-hot blaze of creation unfettered -- as "Giant Boy."

Quickly (over the course of this, and future adventures), "the boy who can change into 1,000 super-heroes" -- as each successive cover so breathlessly avowed -- assumed the guises of some of the all-time, hands-down lamest and enfeebled spandexed character conceptions ever to grace the interior of any professionally produced mainstream American comic book.

Gawd, but it was wonderful. )

Let's hit some of the ostensible "high points," then... shall we?

First on the list has just gotta be "Mighty Moppet." [See panels, accompanying]

A wee, bow-legged spandexed toddler, the Mite of Might

came generously equipped with two "baby bottles," slung on either hip. A quick squirt from the one, and: voila -- !! His foemen of the moment were regressed, chronologically, to a similarly age-challenged state.

Doused with effluvia from the other, and: hey, presto -- !!! Back to normal again.

This, however, was but the merest auger of the horrors yet to come.

Next batter up...? Wellllllllll... howzabout the classic laughingstock known

the whole, wide world over as: "King Kandy"...? [see page, accompanying]

Ensconced with such tres formidable weaponry as "Lollipop Bombs" ("They detonate in your mouth; NOT in your hand!"); "Glue Pellet Gum Drops"; and (waaaaaaiiiiiiiiit for it) the awe-inspiring "Licorice Lasso," the Combat Confectioner was to two-fisted, thrill-a-minute super-hero action what THE INCREDIBLE MISTER LIMPETT was to, say, the cinematic oeuvre of Akira Kurosawa: No Bloody Significance Whatsoever.

On the other hand, however: the King's fearsome battlefield ululation of "LICK ME -- !!!" certainly did earn him a well-deserved niche in the pantheon of heroes.

Yet another dire conceptual doing was manifested with the

arrival on the scene of one "King Coil" [see page, accompanying].

Basically a compressed mattress spring with pop-eyes and opposable thumbs, the Kaliph of Kompression (all right, smart guy; you try coming up with "cutesy" alternative monikers for a gaggle o' good guys so irretrievably lame, they practically require wheelchair access ramps…), King Coil "twANG"ed his malformed way across the page in a never-ending pursuit of Truth; Justice; and a chance to… ummmmm… "stretch" his machine-tooled stuff as a viable comic book super hero. When last seen, he was working alongside Suzanne Sommers in a late night "Thighmaster" television infomercial.

Doubtless, at this point, you are even now settling comfortably back in the chair before your monitor, and heaving a grateful sigh of ineffable relief. "Very well, then" (I can almost hear your murmuring). "I have journeyed through the slough of despair. I have witnessed the retch-inducing, as well as the wretched. After the sorry, tawdry likes of King Coil and Mighty Moppet… surely, no greater horrors can possibly await me." Poor, benighted fools that you are.

It hasn't even begun to hurt, yet.

In issue #165 of HOUSE OF MYSTERY, Robbie Reed found himself transformed into not one -- not two -- but THREE super-hero identities so godforsaken in their sheer, unrelenting awfulness, that they stand fierce and alone in the pantheon of High Artistic Felonies.

Ladies and gentlemen… I give you: "Whozis"… "Whatsit"… and "Howzis." [see pictures, accompanying]

Whozis was (as you've perhaps already ascertained, to your mute and disbelieving horror) a giant, ambulatory red rubber ball. When of a mind to respond to a suitably spandex-friendly situational summons… why, he'd just tuck those spindly li'l legs of his up under his dystrophic arms, and -- WHEEEEEE!!! -- go boing-boing-BOINGing in search of some reasonably super-villainous hinder to kick. And, oh, the highjinks which would inevitably ensue -- !!

Even more hideously malformed, however -- to the point of actually seeming more like something out of a chiropractor's drunken nightmares than the sort of crime-busting material of which a young reader's wide-eyed and innocent dreams are fashioned -- was the hideously spavined slugger known (infamously, surely) as "Whatist": a hunched-over (and perpetually pain-wracked, one could only assume) hero shaped like a giant, sentient boomerang.

(… and -- to forestall the inevitable query -- yes, indeedy: he most certainly did fly through the air. Unfortunately, however… only in concentric circles. If I'm lyin'… I'm dyin'.

... and then -- finally; painfully; and altogether inexcusably -- there came: "HOWZIS: The Living Pinball Machine."

Check this puppy out for artistic distemper, if you will: Howzis activated his "powers" by (get away from me with that breathalyzer, dammit...!) inserting quarters into his own "chest slot"; "pulling" on his... ummmmm... "game toggle"(... must... resist... urge... to... SAY IT --!!); and spraying little, explosive "pinballs" about the room in a near-orgiastic frenzy. And if that storytelling footsie, boys and girls, doesn't fit the ol' Freudian "I-See-a-Train-and-It's-Going-Through-a-Tunnel" slipper sock to a proverbial "T"... then I don't know my sick and morally debilitating fetishes. And I just happen to jolly well believe (based on an easy familiarity with the putative subject at hand) that I do, thankyouverymuch. )

However: even those "dial direct" derring-doers with more appreciably humanoid physiognomies were scarcely anybargain, once conjured up out of the heroic aether. A perfectly valid (if patently absurd) example of this would be the immortal, jingoistic goober deluxe known as "the Yankee Doodle Kid" [see cover accompanying].

I was all set to lay into this wholly misbegotten piece of shopworn super-hero baggage with a deft barrage of side-splitting references to his various (*kaff*kaff*) "super-powers" ("Bright, multi-colored lights... and loud noises? SOCKAMAGEE! I really am one tough customer!" You have no idea how desperately I truly need to believe that the writer was straining on verbal tip-toe towards some leaden sort of irony, here. Really. You just don't. KNOW.)...

... but: on second thought... why waste valuable time and bandwidth spanking THIS schlemiel, anyway? Bad enough he had to go through life in that get-up, as it was. )

"MORE COMIC BOOKS," YOU SAY...?

The DC Comics Sub-Directory
The Marvel Comics Sub-Directory
The Miscellaneous Comics Sub-Directory
The "Gotta Find That DC Character" Menu
The "Gotta Find That Marvel/Miscellaneous Character" Menu

Home Page

LEGAL SHAMANISMS