Trivia Quiz #15 Answers

1. In Detective #336, Batman was bewitched. Who was the witch, and who was the real mastermind behind her?

As I discussed previously, Zatanna was the witch, and the man behind the scenes was the Outsider.

2. Although vampires were prohibited, the CCA allowed two stories featuring a villain who stole the life force from people, battling (and battering) Superman. What was the name of this villain?



The Parasite.

3. Who was the original Green Goblin?

Peter Parker discovered in ASM #40 that the Green Goblin was actually Norman Osborn, the father of his (later) college roommate.

4. What was the name of Marvel/Atlas' late 1950s ripoff of Casper, the Friendly Ghost?

Marvel tried amusing the kids with Homer, the Happy Ghost.

5. Although werewolves were banned as noted above, one key DC character turned into a wolf in a mid-1960s comic. Name him.

Superboy turned into a wolf in Superboy #116:



Well, a Wolf-Boy, anyway. As usual with these really amazing situations, it's all a plot to fool some aliens:



Michael Rebain got all but #4 although he was thinking of a later Superboy story than #116. Dan M scored 100%, and gets extra credit for pointing out that Jimmy Olsen turned into a Wolfman in April 1961. On #2, George C notes Starbreaker, a villain who appeared in JLA #92, but the story was published in 1972, when the CCA had very much relaxed its standards regarding horror themes--for example, Spiderman battled a vampire-like creature named Morbius in ASM #101-102, which came out in October/November 1971. Mike P came up with all but #4.

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Number 407


Out of my brain on the 5:15



This is one of those fun little Whodunnits by Fred Guardineer. It appeared in Lev Gleason's Crime and Punishment #31 from 1950. Besides the title reminding me of a song, "5:15" by the Who, Guardineer's precise artwork reminds me of my old art school studies of perspective. Guardineer looks like he used his knowledge well in this story. It'd be hard to fake perspective when so many panels depend on it.

I flipped the final panels so you can read them without standing on your head.

I've also enclosed a couple of filler pages, both by C. H. Moore; one a sort of antique CSI and the other the ancestor of America's Dumbest Criminals. How about America's dumbest victims, too? The woman who undressed in front of the window peeper while waiting for the police: it's called exhibitionism.

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New 1950s Batman Blog Debuts

I heartily recommend checking out I Believe in Bat-Mite, a new blog dedicated to discussing Batman stories of the 1950s. As many of you know, Batman is my favorite comic book character of all time and so reading these posts was a real treat for me and I'm sure you will enjoy them as well.

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Number 406


Feud on Rimfire Ridge!


Mosey on in and set a spell, podnuh. Got yet another Western--well, West as in West Virginia, anyhow--story to tell ya. This comes from Pappy's box of tear sheets. Someone years ago cut out stories they liked from comic books and threw them in a box. I put them back together. I have four Vigilante stories; this is the oldest, and first to be offered up.

The Vigilante was a long-running feature in Action Comics. I think he was one of the more popular characters who never got his own book. Vigilante was Greg Sanders, a radio singing cowboy who ran with a Chinatown kid named Stuff. When he slipped his kerchief over his face he became the Vigilante.

Mort Meskin, using the name Mort Jr., drew this action-packed 12-pager from Action Comics #57 in 1943, and Charles Paris inked it. The hillbilly kid in the splash panel, who says he's gonna shoot Tom Hatton "daid," learned to pronounce dead by the time this scene shows up on page 9.

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Single Issue Review: Thor #159

In Thor #158, Marvel reprinted the origin of Thor story from Journey into Mystery #83. While on vacation in Norway Don Blake had heard strange stories of an alien invasion. Investigating, the lame doctor found himself being pursued by the aliens. He managed to find his way into a cave, where he found a cane. He discovered that by tapping the cane, he was suddenly transformed into the mighty Thor, with extraordinary powers and abilities. He repelled the alien invasion and began fighting crime while maintaining his secret identity.

While it is certainly a very unusual origin, it presented some problems, especially since early on Stan introduced the concept of Asgard, where Thor was a god with his father Odin and numerous friends and enemies. It wasn't long before the fans noticed the problem with this. If Thor had existed all along, who was Don Blake? What had happened to the mighty Thor that his magic hammer/cane was sitting in that cavern?

This was the subject of an almost endless series of letters to the editor speculating on possibilities, and in Thor #159, Stan decided to finally settle the matter. Thor had been exiled to Earth by Odin as a punishment for his lack of humility. We learned that Don Blake had only actually existed for a few years, having been created by Odin with a lame leg in order to humble the Thunder God.

Of course, the idea that he had learned some real humility is rather silly; if ever there was a character who was full of himself, it was Thor. This is part of his character as a god, so maybe Odin was grading on the curve.

The story is solid, with new details about the origin of a major character in the Marvel Universe. At last we understand why Don Blake himself has no life aside from his doctor's office. Indeed, Blake had no friends or continuing characters from his earthly life, with the exception of Jane Foster, who of course was gone by then.

On the art side, I am not a huge fan of Jack Kirby's Silver Age work, but I must acknowledge that this issue was terrific. Check out this full-pager:



What's not to like there? Simply beautiful, as is the rest of the book.

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3 Frew: #1111, 1274, 1416

(Frew) Phantom 1111-1995-The Secret Agent

(Frew) Phantom 1274-1999-The Phantom Goes to War - Lee Falk

(Frew) Phantom 1416-2005-Korzan - King of the Jungle(wolf 4)

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Friday Trivia Quiz #15: Hallowe'en Treat

Unfortunately, the Silver Age of Comics was undoubtedly the worst for horror comics. The Comics Code Authority basically arose to ensure that America's youth did not read comic books with horror elements. Consider these requirements from the CCA:

1. No comics magazine shall use the word horror or terror in its title.

2. All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted.

3. All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated.

4. Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly nor as to injure the sensibilities of the reader.

5. Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism and werewolfism are prohibited.

That pretty much does it for the more interesting forms of horror, and as a result, the "horror" comics of the Silver Age were pretty tame fare, mostly featuring monsters like Frankenstein. By the end of the 1960s the cracks in the CCA wall were becoming obvious, and in the 1970s horror with vampires and all returned with a vengeance.

So here's a little quiz about some of the moderately horrific comics of the Silver Age:

1. In Detective #336, Batman was bewitched:



Who was the witch, and who was the real mastermind behind her?

2. Although vampires were prohibited, the CCA allowed two stories featuring a villain who stole the life force from people, battling (and battering) Superman. What was the name of this villain?

3. Who was the original Green Goblin?

4. What was the name of Marvel/Atlas' late 1950s ripoff of Casper, the Friendly Ghost?

5. Although werewolves were banned as noted above, one key DC character turned into a wolf in a mid-1960s comic. Name him.

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