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

... or: "How Can You Be In Two Places At Once, When You Aren't Anywhere At All...?" (PART SIX)

We've spent the better part of a month staring wide-eyed at a few of the more outré (and outrageous) examples of chronal jay-walking in the DC Comics universe of the Silver Age... and if I were to allow this subject its head, we might just as easily spend another month doing so. (The Good Lord only knows, I never anticipated the subject gobbling up this obscene amount of bandwidth in the first place. And when I think of how this entry has prevented me from starting work on that crucial, oft-

delayed LEFT-HANDED LITHUANIAN DENTISTS OF THE SILVER AGE diatribe I've been mulling over...)

I'm going to do a red-faced mea culpa on an error which (inadvertently) popped up on an earlier page; cap off the subject with two more intriguing examples (one clever and worthwhile; one... not); and then table the discussion for the nonce, in order that we can cover a few other comics-related subjects that have had me champing at the bit for a while, now.

First things first: on Page Six of this particular entry, I made the following statement, re: the Flash's first time-traveling nemesis:

"Given that the time- traveling thief known as Mazdan has (so far as the author can readily recall, at any rate) yet to make a reappearance... it may safely be assumed that he is currently doing hard time somewhere, at long last."

Boyoboyoboy... did I ever hear from you lot on that one.

As site regulars Rob Staeger; Luis Olavo Dantas; and Rita Matthews (among others) all took the time to graciously point out to me, via e-mail... said balding baddie most assuredly did make a reappearance, years later, in a Cary Bates-scripted/Irv Novick-penciled issue involving the entirety of the Flash's "Rogues Gallery." (D'OH -- !!)

In other words: I have been An Imperfect Plush Toy.

Look... you think you're all shaken and stunned by the revelation

(Why... the theological ramifications alone...!)

Let us all indulge in a cyber-communal moment of silence, whilst the cosmos shudders and realigns itself in the light of this new and hideous knowledge.

[...]

Okay. That's enough.

One of the most appealing and inventive "twists" on the notion of time travel in the Silver Age DCU was the series of "Time Pool" stories which took place within the pages of Gardner Fox-scripted issues of The Atom.

A professorial colleague of Ray Palmer's, Professor Alpheus V. Hyatt had perfected a means by which a hand-sized rift could be opened in the chronal continuum, in order that a miniature camera might be lowered into same and snap pictures of various significant (and not-so- significant) occurrences in world history.

As often as not, Professor Hyatt's temporal tattler would uncover some hitherto-unsuspected wrinkle or glitch in the chronal warp and woof, occasioning the opportunity for The Tiny Titan to be-bop his abbreviated self through said rift and do a little impromptu paradox unsnarling.

These time-crossed tales were (unlike the vast majority of previously detailed entries on this subject) literate; inventive; and wholly engaging ones. Quite often, the chronal "glitch" in question would hinge upon such clever notions as (say) the shifting of the European calendar from the Julian to the Gregorian (as shown in the accompanying examples), or similarly obscure bits of historical minutiae.

Meticulously rendered by regular series artist (and Silver Age legend) Gil Kane with a keen eye and careful hand for historical verisimilitude, the "Time Pool" stories were endlessly entertaining affairs, with The Mighty Mite plying his two-fisted trade against an assortment of dastardly noblemen; rogues; highwaymen; and buccaneers.

Were I to select but one example of How To Do It Right, re: the concept of "time travel" in a mainstream adventure comic...

... I'd pick one of these. Ten times out of every ten.

Okay. So.

All of you regular visitors, hereabouts, know what's going to happen next. This being the very lastest page entry, re: this particular topic, and all.

I always -- always -- save the absolute worst for last.

"Surrender, Dorothy." "Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid." "Prepare To Be Assimilated." "This Time, It's Personal." Insert Dramatic, Fear-Inducing Cinematic Cliche Here.

It's gonna hurt, people.

It's gonna hurt real bad.

"Once Upon a Time, In the Wild, Wild West" [JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA #198 and #199; 1st series. Gerry Conway, writer; Don Heck, penciler] opens up with a sequence wherein the scarred and embittered bounty hunter known as Jonah Hex stumbles across an amnesiac (and wildly out of character) Green Lantern somewhere in the badlands of the American west. circa 1878.

(By "out of character," in the aforementioned paragraph: I mean the normally rock-jawed and resolute Hal Jordan aiming a Power Ring blast towards a solicitous Jonah, and shrieking "Move one inch closer, cowboy... and dead is just what you'll be!" whilst the gunslinger is attempting rescue him from a long, slow Death By Dehydration under the pitiless gaze of the desert sun. Stuff like that, there.

(There are certain subtle "signs" by which one might reasonably auger or intuit that a particular comic book -- as yet unread -- may be...

(... well... lacking a wee tad in the Quality Scripting Department.

(The Batman: striding remorselessly about... with the head of a large gopher, in place of his own. Lois Lane: ruling Apokolips, and musing over her repeated inability to divine the true nature of the Anti-Life Equation. Rob Liefeld: his name in the credits, under "writer."

(A panicky, shrilly-bleating Green Lantern is As One with any/all of these.

(So: right away, you see... we just know.)

Even for a trail-hardened, bounty-huntin', quasi-outlaw type, Jonah seems remarkably blase about having chanced upon a man in skintight spandex smack-dab in the middle of nowhere, with some sort of weird, glowing ring on his finger capable of atomizing a free-standing mountain range...

... but scarcely any more so, in turn, than are fellow DC Comics western characters Bat Lash; Scalphunter; and Cinnamon, as they encounter (respectively) the equally-amnesiac Flash; Elongated Man; and Zatanna.

(I mean: Zatanna magicks a hurricane into existence, inside of a saloon... and all her rescuer [the under-utilized lady gunhawk Cinnamon] can think of to say, by way of response, is a bland: "Say... you're wore down, aren't you, girl?" A stoic Scalphunter -- upon encountering the bloody Elongated Man, f'chrissakes! A total, did-you- see-that freak of nature, on any planet! -- simply shrugs, and says: "I am called Ke-Woh-No-Tay. And you, Man-With-Long-Reach...?" Stuff this shameless and inept isn't even "good/bad" enough to be entertainingly awful, for cryin' out loud -- !)

We're nowhere near scripter Conway's Idiot Plot Occurrence Threshhold, however. Back in the Here and Now, a perplexed Superman is frantically attempting to ascertain the current whereabouts of the time-tossed quartet ("Two seconds ago, four Justice Leaguers were investigating a peculiar power source that had appeared suddenly out of nowhere in the American west... and now, abruptly, all four of them are gone!")

High-speed hauling his heroic red-and-blue hinder towards the last known location of the foursome -- i.e., The Grand Canyon -- he immediately encounters a Kryptonite-laden robot booby trap, constructed and improbably set into motion by none other than...

... The Lord of Time.

Yeah. That's right. The same umpteen-time loser who got his butt kicked by a lone Karate Kid on an regular and ongoing basis. [See "Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART FOUR" for more on that. I mean... geez. This guy wasn't even a credible menace for a guy whose main super-power was the ability to say "heeeeee-YAH!" with a reasonably straight face. I'm just sayin', here, is all.]

I'm going to quote Our UberGoober's breathtakingly brain dead "master plan" here -- lovingly (if somewhat pointlessly) recounted by same to a fairly convincingly unconscious Superman, by the by -- in all of its jaw-droppingly imbecilic glory. Take it away, Lord, baby:

"Scientists have theorized that a huge meteor crashed in Siberia, causing [an] explosion [at the turn of the century]... and others have suggested the meteor was made of anti-matter, to cause such destruction!

"What no one knows but I is this: there was a similar explosion here in the Grand Canyon, at this very spot, in the year 1878!"

[SIDE NOTE: Yeah... I'd pretty much have to pledge allegiance to that one, push come to shove. He's dead right: no one else "knows" that there was an anti-matter explosion IN THE GRAND CANYON a little over one hundred years ago. Something like that could happen without drawing any attention at all, really. Just a li'l anti-matter Armageddon, is all. Jeeeeeeeeeeeezus.]

"If I could capture that anti-matter bubble before it disintegrated... I could use its energies to make myself -- dare I say it? -- Master of the World!"

A Helpful Hint, To Any/All Would-Be Comics Scripters Out There Reading These Words:

Never, ever do this.

Issue #199, unfortunately, does not open with a scene wherein Superman awakens from a night of fitful, anchovy-and-peanut-butter pizza-fuelled slumber, only to sigh shakily and mutter: "... migawd, what a crazy nutty kookoo dream that was." More's the pity.

Instead, we are treated to an extended sequence of scenes in which the scattered amnesiac Leaguers are all (improbably) reunited with one another. These coy little exercises in whimsical, whey-faced "... don't I know you from somewhere?"-ism, without exception, ring about as "true" as a paper bell.

("The man-of-rubber means no harm, woman. He is not well in the mind. He has no name." Five dollars, American, and a personally signed copy of DOUBLE-DARE ADVENTURES #1 ("... starring Bee-Man!") to the first man; woman; or child who can convince this author -- based solely on that word balloon, alone -- that mandatory drug testing within the comics industry isn't an idea whose time has finally come.)

Turning our attentions, once more, to the sickly, mewling thing DC went with instead of a plot: the heroes all ride off in search of the root cause of their memory malaise, fending off the stray robot gunslinger or twelve they happen to chance across in their wanderings.

Incidentally: said "robot gunslingers" make (big surprise, I know) no sense whatsoEVER, in terms of simple storytelling logic. The Lord of Time ("I am like unto a God. A God who can be karate-kicked into total submission. A real weenie God. Let all lesser weenies bow before me. If any.") tells us that he specifically transported the four memory-

less myrmidons into the past, so that they might (somehow) maake certain that the "anti-matter bubble" -- remember that? -- might "detonate," as predestined, over the Grand Canyon. In which case, attempting to slaughter the heroes BEFORE THEY EVEN GET THERE is almost monumentally stoooooooopid. Whoever it was who first coined the phrase "Reading Is FUNdamental" obviously never took a close, hard look at one of Gerry Conway's Justice League of America scripts.

To make a long story only slightly more hellish and excruciating: the four Leaguers manage to regain enough of their stolen memories (just how, precisely, they manage to do so is never made quite clear; it might be the crisp desert air, for all the help the writer is, at this point) to dope out the imminent arrival of Dat Ol' Debbil Anti-Matter Bubble, and realize that the only thing standing between the Earth of 1878, A.D. and Total Annihilaation is...

-- JONAH HEX!

With nary a backward glance, the baleful bounty hunter fires up his cosmic-powered MegaHorsie and rockets up, up towards the hurtling anti-matter bubble! Drawing a bead on the awful thing with his twin Neutrino-Plasma Blasters, he fires and --

... oh, yeah. Right. Like that would have been any sillier than what actually did happen.

Here's the real skinny on How It All Went Down... so help me [Insert Name or Title of Preferred Deity Here]:

The Flash lunges towards a dazed and unsuspecting Elongated Man; grabs the poor s.o.b. by the arms; and commences to utilize his terrified teammate as a giant fan, in order to "create a mile-wide updraft [...] it'll cause a bump in the Earth's atmosphere [...] just enough to reach the anti-matter bubble [...] so that the resulting explosion will safely dissipate in outer space!"

Yeah. I probably would have opted for the "Jonah Hex: Galactic Guardian" scenario, myself.

I'm just sayin', is all.

Okay, campers: we've spent a nice, loooooonnnnnng seven pages shining our little lights on some of the more notable (or -- in some instances -- infamous) examples of TIME TRAVEL IN THE DC COMICS OF THE SILVER AGE...

... and I find (much to my own horror and incredulity) that I've barely even scratched the surface of this fascinating subject.

Still: I'm all "time traveled" out, for the nonce. I'm feeling the four-color version of chronal jet lag.

Therefore: with all due kudos and thanks to fellow Silver Age Discussion List member "Big" Bill Brackeen, for providing the initial impetus towards the hasty cobbling up of these pages... I'm going to turn off the WayBack Machine, for now, and focus on a few other comics -oriented subjects I've been meaning to cover on this site for a good-ish while, now.

Don't worry, though...

... we'll be coming back to this subject.

In time.

"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART ONE"

"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART TWO"

"Time Travel On the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART THREE"

"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART FOUR"

"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART FIVE"

"Time Travel In the DC Comics of the Silver Age: PART SIX"

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