The Greatest 1950s Stories Ever Told: "Top Secret!"

Oh, how I've been looking forward to posting my review of this story! I don't think there was a single DC comic in the 1950's with a female in it that wasn't darn right crrrrrazy!!!

This one is a Wonder Woman tale published a mere two issues after the forced departure of original iconic Wonder Woman artist H.G. Peters. The talented Ross Andru and Mike Esposito took over the art chores, and the illustrations are like cotton candy- pure bliss! The story, however, is whack-a-doodle-doo!

The change of creative direction threw out many elements, that until then, defined the Amazon princess as Wonder Woman! Gone was her mythological origin, any references to World War Two, and her original purpose. Just a crazy super chick dealing with relationship issues and the dimwitted schemes of the oh-so handsome Colonel Steve Trevor!

With that in mind, check out Wonder Woman #99 (July 1958):

The splash page diptych is gorgeous! But we find out that the origin of Wonder Woman's alter ego Diana Prince is about to get revamped!

The story starts off like a comic book remix of old letters to the Ladies Home Journal with the gossipy banter of "Steel Magnolias!"

Scarf??? Why the heck does Wonder Woman even own a scarf??? Maybe that's a tale for a later issue!

Wow, what luck, Col. Steve Trevor! Your wing just "snaps" off. A clear symbol of emasculation.

Wonder Woman "firmly" holds Trevor's broken appendage into place until he's made his landing.

The stunt is done. There is photographic evidence, and it will show up when least expected. Wonder Woman better have an agent...

Ok! Here's the conflict of this story (and many others to come): Steve Trevor has co-dependency issues, while Wonder Woman "explains" that she can only be with him once WORLD PEACE is at hand. Trevor, she's just not that into you!

Col. Trevor, are you a starry-eyed, high school freshman??? Such poetic whining!

Wow. Mc-Schemey! Look at all that CRAZY going on in those eyes! Wonder Woman! Dump. His. Ass. NOW!

OMG. He already has a goddam ring. Look at Wonder Woman's cold, wooden, lifeless expression. She wants to run, but just took a dump in those blue, starry wonder-shorts of hers.

One of my favorite comic book panels of all time! MILLIONS of bathers at this beach! That's a lot of sun-tan lotion! Check out the plus-sized manatee in the hat! You can tell the artists had fun drawing this one!

First of all, Wonder Woman at a beach. How amazingly perfect! She wears a swim-suit, like every single day!

Ok. This is where I gush about the cinematic style of this triptych. This sequence is expertly choreographed. The three panels are practically the same, except that in each one Steve Trevor gets eerily and eerily closer. Such a stalker!!! And Wonder Woman is so stunned her face is frozen in place. She can not believe the level of crazy.

Whew! What a relief, Wonder Woman! That roller coaster conveniently needs fixing! Who the heck are the contractors in this town? The planes' wings just fall off. The roller coasters crash into pieces. The workmanship isn't what it used to be!

This has all the makings of a bad Lifetime movie!

I could stare at this panel for ages! Check out all those interesting costumes! It's like a set of some crazy Hollywood musical! Cleopatra, Lady Luck, the Egg Lady! Amazing, there's also Bugs Bunny and Minnie Mouse!

I'd love to see Wonder Woman at the costume shop deciding on this one!

Ooooo, look at look of despair and pure dread on the princess' face! Her nightmare has shockingly come true!

Sigh! Another chance to get away from him! Hey, Trevor, you should step back and reconsider your relationship with someone who would rather take the chance of being struck dead by lightning over being your wife. Kind of a subtle clue.

Ahhhh, Steve your desperate plan just flopped. Maybe next time you should just fake a pregnancy to get her to marry you.

Ooh la la! A bevy of attractive hot-nerd applicants and an oral examination. Make sure it's thorough!

Underwater??? What kind of secretary position is this, anyway???

So...it's come to this. Steve Trevor is such an annoyance and disruption in Wonder Woman's life that she is now taking time out of her busy crime-fighting and earth-protecting time to secretly keep tabs on his every stupid, scheming move. Funny, she would rather dress up as a nerd and take orders from him as his work underling, but she won't marry his ignorant ass. It's like the saying goes, keep your friend close, but your enemies closer. And to think all this time, I believed the Cheetah to be Wonder Woman's arch foe, when it was Steve Trevor the entire time!

The Greatest 1950s Stories Ever Told: "The Riddle of the Crystal Ball!"

The next story in this collection is from Western Comics #72 (December 1958), and it stars one of DC's old cowboy heroes, Hannibal Hawkes, aka Nighthawk! Art by Gil Kane, a job sandwiched between his run on the Adventures of Rex the Wonder Dog and his career defining runs on the new Green Lantern and the Atom.

I admit I haven't read many western comics before this. So, I took what I knew from watching old reruns of the Lone Ranger and the Rifleman TV shows, and pretended the cowboy gear was substitute super hero/villain costumery. Worked pretty well for this story!

Basically, some dumb crooks are in town, and are convinced by a "gypsy" that Hannibal Hawkes is Nighthawk and that that night is a good time to rob the local church bazaar. It's all a plan by Nighthawk to get those thieves just where he wants them.

Interestingly, all those men are pulling a Brokeback, trying to catch a Nighthawk peepshow in the crystal ball! Gypsies can con you into doing almost anything!

Ahhh...the reveal!

Kind of like...

Tommy Sands, aka Floretta, the Gypsy in Drag in Babes in Toyland (1961). [I saw this one in my church's basement as a kid...)

Here's one of only six panels in the story where he's dressed as Nighthawk.

He might want to also try this look...

Gypsy, the Cyndi Lauper-styled, homeless and barefoot member of the Justice League when it was headquartered in Detroit during the 1980s!

Well, in the scheme of the DC universe of heroes, readers later find out that Nighthawk is one of Hawkman's past lives. Yep! Originally, Hawkman and Hawkgirl were an Egyptian royal couple, killed and cursed to keep living Romeo and Juliet lives throughout the rest of time, usually becoming different DC universe heroes in one life to the next. So it kind of makes sense. Hawkman. Hannibal Hawkes. Nighthawk. And both Hawkgirl and Cinnamon, Nighthawk's lady friend are angry fiery redheads. Roar!

Anyway, here's Nighthawk later being wiped out of existence by an earth-consuming wave of anti-matter:

Guess, he didn't see that one in that ol' crystal ball!

The Greatest 1950s Stories Ever Told: "Devil's Island in Space!"

This tale features one of the very few original post-Golden-Age super-heros DC created in the early 1950s---Captain Comet, a mutant born with abilities of humans 100,000 years in the future!

Intro: Captain Comet!


Long before the whiny, angst-ridden X-men of Marvel Comics fame, there was Adam Blake. A son born to a kindly midwestern couple, John and Martha Ke....oops, Blake. When he was being birthed a comet flashed above (could it have been the baby Superman's spacecraft???) and triggered a genetic change in the baby's mind. As he grew up, he discovered he could just know where to find any lost item, read entire encyclopedias and memorize them word-for-word, play every instrument in a band without ever knowing the song, and perform every single sport beyond Olympic capabilities. With all these abilities he felt...different; and as he grew up he logically fell into the librarian field. It wasn't until he was hanging out with and gaining the guidance of some older physicist, Dr. Zackro that he discovered the truth about himself... and just in time, because some criminals had a beef with the professor! After defeating them with his amazing powers of the future, he decided to become a hero when pretty much the rest of the DC Universe was quitting.

This age of comic books was the awkward stage for super-heroes. The Golden Age of heroes was over and being taken over by other story genres. The Silver Age of super-heroes wouldn't be in full force until the end of the decade. Some have called this the "Atomic Age," a time of few new heroes. Captain Comet was pretty much sitting alone at the junior-high lunch-table of comic book characters!

"Devil's Island in Space!" takes place a bit later after his first appearance, in Strange Adventures #28 (January 1953), and fittingly to the zeitgeist of the age relies heavily on the use of the H-bomb in the plot. The story is beautifully rendered by master artist Murphy Anderson!

Creeeeeepy! Those alien creatures look like invisible sexual predators, all horned up after a sitting in their communist, alien sauna! Watch out, Captain Comet!

The story starts off with a the US military about to happily test the crap out of some H-bomb on some dumb Pacific island.

We find out those perverted-looking aliens were actually prisoners sent from another planet to live out their sentences here on Earth, in a bunch of caves. Man-caves. Anyway, what do these aliens do with their time? Create an invisibility mechanism out of cave rocks so they can secretly lurk about in lockerrooms across the world.

And to use their keen alien intellect to walk about and carry an H-bomb away by hand.

Captain Comet uses his keen mind of far future:

Oh. He followed their footprints and their wheel marks. Brilliant.

So he captures the alien creeps and delivers them back to their home planet.

Hey, Planet of Labia! We don't want you dumping your sexual offenders and criminals on our beautiful Earth. We love our planet! We want it safe, so we may blast it away island by island with our H-bombs!!! Yay, Captain Comet, the man whose mind has the same half-life as uranium!

The Greatest 1950s Stories Ever Told: "Gorilla City!"

Ahhh! This story features Congo Bill!

Before I talk about the story in this book I must go back a bit. When I was a teenager, I first discovered Congo Bill in a comic book quarter bin (yay!) at a flea market. In this particular issue, a team-up story of Superman and a bunch of lost-to-time second-banana comic-characters, Congo Bill appeared as a later version of himself: the ape with his human mind- Congorilla!

I found this tale fascinating! Long before the internet, it was always and adventure finding out who these "forgotten heroes" were. You have several layers of characters in comics. You have your heavy hitters, the ones everyone knows: Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. Then you have your minor league characters who, if you are just a casual reader, you'd come across quite regularly, like Zatanna or the Elongated Man. Finally, there are the ones you could find in the back of dusty, smelly comic boxes in some nerd's basement, who may have been popular at one point, maybe even had their own comics- but have since become relics of history. Congo Bill was one of those! And like I said just before, getting to know the background and history of characters like him posed a challenge at the time. No wikipedia or google search engine to type into. You had to piece it together only using comics that became available by chance.

So who is this Congo Bill???

He was your basic jodhpur and pith helmet-wearing jungle-adventurer with a mustache who just happened to be published in one comic or another by DC Comics for more than 20 years. He first appeared in an issue of More Fun Comics in 1940 and then jumped around title to title.

I guess he was popular enough, or the right person liked him, that he even starred in his own 15-part motion picture serial, released by Columbia Pictures in 1949.

In 1954 Congo Bill even had his own comic title for a while, and gained a partner in Janu, the Jungle Boy who was living wild in the jungle since the death of his jungle guide father. Bill's life changed dramatically in 1959, the new age of super-heroes, when he was given a ring by a dying tribal chief that gave him the power to switch bodies with a giant golden gorilla!

For the next couple of years he was known as Congorilla, and he would defend Africa against evil by locking himself in a cage, rubbing his gorilla ring and telepathically swapping bodies with that golden beast! Janu would babysit his human body, which now had the mind of that gorilla! I hope Janu got paid well and got a chance to raid the fridge!

Although, originally published in Congo Bill #6 (June/July 1955), "Gorilla City!" took place before all the late 50s Congorilla zaniness-- Congo Bill still seemed to have one wacked-out life! Basically, all you need to know is that Congo Bill and Janu see something light up the sky one night, are kidnapped by gorillas the next morning, find out the gorillas can talk and fix clocks, help their captors find a radioactive box, and after the gorillas leave realize that they were really Martians!

What interests me about this story in particular is the appearance of Janu. First of all, I must mention, the story is illustrated by the great Nick Cardy, who later went on to draw the Aquaman and Teen Titans series in the 1960s. Here Janu looks a whole lot like Aqualad (who would be created a few years later)! But what I noticed is his skin color. I was reading this tale on a bus-ride home, and as I was reading something didn't seem quite right. It wasn't until I got home, and googled Janu that I could put my finger on it:

Janu kind of changed races!

As originally printed,in Congo Bill #6 (June/July 1955)

The recolored version in the 1990 edition of the Greatest 1950 Stories Ever Told

I already figured out that all the stories have been re-colored and appear differently than when they were first published; however, this must have been some editorial edict saying Janu is from Africa, he must appear African- even, if he was drawn Caucasian. Anyway, whatever! Black or white, Janu steals the show with his dim-witted jungle-talk comedy:

Ending this entry with some jungle humor:

Watch out, newly black-Janu!

The Greatest 1950s Stories Ever Told: "The Mystery of the Giant Arrows" and "Prisoners of Dimension Zero!"

This entry is not about one story but two! Rare for the time, this Green Arrow back-up story continued into the next issue. Also in the vein of a true epic, it was illustrated by comic book king, Jack Kirby!

Green Arrow, up until this point, was always a second rate Batman rip-off. Instead of a utility belt that contained any gadget needed to fight off criminals, he had his arrow pouch with an unexplainably infinite number of different arrows specific to whatever he needed it for. A boxing-glove arrow, an antidote arrow, a net arrow, etc. Green Arrow was also the proud owner of the Arrow-car, the Arrow-Cave, millions of dollars, and an orphan ward and sidekick in Roy Harper, aka Speedy. Batman-lite, so to speak!

For a brief time comics pioneer Kirby, desperate for work, took over the strip. Hoping, that if he spiffed up the strip a bit, that the series would get its own title and thus possibly guaranteeing a regular future paycheck for himself. He gave the detective character more of a science fiction, fantasy element as seen in these stories reprinted in this book.

These comics sere some of the best DC was putting out at the time, but alas, it was not to be. Mort Weisinger, co-creator of Green Arrow and one of the DC big-wigs, and a group of other established industry workers were none to pleased with the new amazing direction of his character and voiced their concerns loudly. Kirby's editor caved under their demands and told Kirby to go back to the old way. The King of comics was rightly disgusted, picking up and leaving DC Comics. He ended up getting some work with Stan Lee--- and making comic book history by creating the Marvel universe of characters and toppling DC with their new style of comics. Green Arrow went back to being some hum-drum, second-rate Batman knock off- and stayed that way for years until the late 60's when the writers gave him a bold new direction; losing his millions, becoming a social liberal, growing the Robin Hood goat-tee and donning a new costume, and ultimately finding his young partner Speedy shooting up heroin!

Anyway, here's a bit of amazing Green Arrow renaissance material from Adventure Comics # 252 and 253 (Sept./Oct. 1958):

This is no regular detective story! GA and Speedy, you will soon be pondering existence itself! Get ready for an epic ontological experience!

This epic tale begins with the masses coming into contact with the unbelievable!

Mother Earth is about to become "pregnant" with the notion of other realities! Green Arrow and Speedy are about to get to get the call to become unknowing mid-wives!

So many questions!!!! (And, at this point, I question the crazy coincidence of the earth getting pummeled by giant arrow-shaped missiles and Green Arrow being the lone hero who shows up...)

This panel is awe-inspiring! Kirby creates the feeling of earth-shattering helplessness by including our hero down on the ground amongst the throngs of the utterly clueless and frightened masses!

I'm impressed with Arrow's concern for Speedy's hearing! If only he were that caring years later (maybe Speedy wouldn't have become a raging drug addict).

Oh my god! The suspense keeps building! How is a small-time hero like Green Arrow going to handle this??? Look at the look of helplessness of that cop as he's pretending to keep it together! Check out the report of that newsman, and imagine a big-time reporter today like Anderson Cooper not being able to give the viewers a clue!

With the aid of Science, Green Arrow comes in contact with the Gods!

And we're left with the cliffhanger as Green Arrow and Speedy are whisked off into the unknown (and hoping there is oxygen there!), realizing that they may never return!

We begin again, with Part 2, and already the very existence of Earth has shattered as timelines collapse. Within a span of panels, history has already been rewritten to where Green Arrow and Speedy didn't come across the giant arrow at the observatory, as we just saw, but as they were driving out from the Arrowcave! Did any of the events from last issue transpire at all????

Green Arrow has spiraled into the Unknown!!!

I wish Green Arrow had a special autograph arrow!

Soooo, they landed in a Chuck Jones' Dr. Seuss world! Look at those characters' features!

They come across the unimaginable---A giant techno alien elf version of himself! I wonder what "Xeen" means?

How flabbergasting to meet your dimensional "double" and then to speak telepathically with him! How utterly mind-blowing!!!

So with the help of his other-worldly giant doppelgänger, Green Arrow and Speedy are shot home on another giant arrow! Will it destroy Earth? Oh, ok, no problem. Attach some parachute arrows and somehow move it into your Arrowcave, put on your millionaire robe, light a pipe, and then don't bother to tell anyone in the rest of the world (who are going absolutely nuts about those other giant arrows striking their cities) about what happened!