Stumbo, the Giant Racist

I consider myself something of an aficionado of the L-for-R transposition in fictionalized Chinese and Japanese speech. It's a time-honored gag, and whether it's used obliviously for the simple comedic flair of incomprehensibility, or manipulated in the masterful hands of a young Benny Hill, one thing is for sure: It's pretty darn racist.

Rather than dragging out any thousands of Blackhawks or Crimson Avenger panels with which to offend, I bring you what may be the single most egregious use of the transposition, courtesy of an old Harvey Comics story in which Stumbo the Giant has misplaced his diminutive duchy Tinytown, and searches for it in - amidst other places - a hollowed-out mountain where he sometimes keeps stuff. You know, like living beings.



FACT: THERE'S NOT EVEN AN R IN "STUMBO,"SO WHAT THE FUCK STLUMBO???

Crime Was Different Back In The Day (Part 2)

Once again, this is from Captain Marvel and the Good Humor man

Crime Was Different Back In The Day (Part 1)

From Captain Marvel and the Good Humor Man

Super Friends, After Dark

I’d mentioned previously that E.Nelson Bridwell, while taking on writing chores for the Super Friends comic (and doing a surprisingly decent job for what was essentially a tie-in to a Saturday Morning Cartoon – Bridwell certainly knew he had here the opportunity to work not only on the Justice League but to do so against a practically clean slate ) indulged in the opportunity to develop a backstory for Zan and Jayna, the Wonder Twins.

The Twins took on secret identities in order to attend school and learn about their adopted world, and in doing so piqued the curiosity of some of their classmates. In Super Friends #29, some of the disguised Twins’ classmates took it upon themselves to discreetly follow the pair after school, to sneakily uncover what appeared to be an aura of strangeness about the two of them. Of course, the Wonder Twins were trained in surveillance and evasion by Batman, and trained in killing dudes by Amazon soldiers, so they just slaughter their classmates and bathe in their blood.

OH NO WAIT, I got distracted. Knowing that they’re being followed (by a different classmate every day), the Twins come upon a plan -a weird plan, I admit – to baffle their classmates. Each day, they lead the pursuing classmate to an alley into which they duck, and by the time the classmate turns the corner, they’ve used their transformative powers to become something weird to blow their minds.

Like, one time Jayna becomes an elephant with butterfly wings and Zan becomes, I don’t know, a spittoon which sings opera. Something useless. Or Jayna becomes a pterodactyl and Zan becomes novelty ice cubes made of blood, I don’t recall, Zan is boring.

And then, the last time, they become the following:



Super Friends. The comic where Jayna showed her tits to some chick. Subscribe now!

Super Friends #11: Never Mind Joker's Boner, Here's The ...

It’s pretty clear to me that E.Nelson Bridwell looked at his 1976 assignment to write the companion comic to the popular Super Friends Saturday Morning Cartoon as one fuck of an opportunity. He extrapolated on the premise of the team, worked in references to contemporary continuity in the DC comics universe proper, and featured guest appearances not only from other DC heroes but the occasional oblique cameo from a Marvel character or three. Bridwell also introduced a long-running storyline pitting the Super Friends against an evil mastermind, created what may be the first international and multi-ethnic team of super heroes by the way of the Global Guardians, and created an extensive backstory and developing story arc for Wendy, Marvin and the Wonder Twins. Oh, and also this:



Yes, Superman. You. Uh. You blew that job. One might actually call it a … well, they’d just call it that is what, Superman.

The Red Blazer! Zooom!

I have a new favorite superhero, another “Red-“ prefixed Golden Ager who is supplanting the place originally held in my heart by Quality Comics' The Red Bee (“He fights crime with the power of – a BEE! Just one! Which lives in his belt!"). My new guy is The Red Blazer, late of Harvey Comics back in their pre-Richie Rich days of Glamorous Detective Stars, girl commandoes and other utter superheroic bugshittery.

I like the Red Blazer for two reasons: First off, no matter how tacky a red blazer might actually be, it's nothing compared to the collection of Cirque de Soleil castoffs which ended up in this cat's hope chest, to wit:



Secondly, there is his origin story, which conveniently occurs in his first appearance (Harvey's Pocket Comics #1) The origin story serves an important purpose in comics – besides providing motivation for the character, it gives context to whatever it is the holy hell this guy in short pants and a Lone Ranger mask is doing shooting fire from his buttcheeks. Context is valuable. It keeps credulity from being sprained worse than a girl scientist's heel in a 1960s monster movie.

The Red Blazer's story starts in the wide open plains of Wyoming where one Doctor Morgan is returning from his sold-out forty year tour of Mars. Morgan is returning by way of an enormous spaceship that must have had cowpokes and ranchers across three states shitting themselves with a force so profound that it could be emblazoned over the archway entrances to many better universities.

Accompanying Morgan is his Martian assistant Kagah, who embraces the beauty of the vast, awe-inspiring prairie by promptly kicking the bucket on his first lungful of Earth atmosphere.



Doctor Morgan takes it upon himself to bury his beloved assistant, which is when random cowpoke Jack Dawson stumbles upon the scene. The cowboy code – and I know this, you may not know this, this is something I know – clearly states that anytime you find a stranger in the middle of the plains burying a dude, you just take him at his word that it was an accident. If you're trying for your “No Body, No Evidence" merit badge, you be an extra good scout and help the guy with his burying. According to the license plates, Wyoming is the “Thousands of Dudes Buried In Unmarked Graves" state.



Dawson's apparent absence of guile also leads him to unquestioningly accept the what I believe to be the utterly insane ramblings of Doctor Morgan, who fills Dawson's ears with some nonsense about returning from space with special magic technology to help mankind be more awesome. This is in spite of having just offed a guy. He must be a hell of a public speaker, this Doctor Morgan.

Morgan goes on to reward Dawson for all his help and faith by slipping him a roofie and stuffing him in the trunk of his intergalactic pedo van.



Dawson awakes, alone, in Liberace's swimsuit, apparently on a cot in the boiler room of Doctor Morgan's spaceship – oh, which Morgan set on automatic pilot and sent hurtling into the path of some space rays. A trustworthy sort, this Doctor Morgan.

The radiation bath – and I'll bet a million dollars that wasn't the only bath Dawson got when he was unconscious – not only gives him the fashion sense of a mime smurf but also the power of “ASTRO-PYRO RAYS." And possibly a rash. The Astro-Pyro rays not only improve Dawson's cornpoke dialect but knock him up the evolutionary ladder “a few pegs," making him “the perfect man." The perfect man wouldn't wear his collar up, I know this for a fact.



From there, the story takes the usual Golden Age vigilante track – Red Blazer declares a war on crime, employs a probably-unnecessary level of brutality, terrorizes some hoboes and generally just kills a whole bunch of fuckers without ever so much as looking back. At the end of the story, Doctor Morgan – whom we last saw wandering off into the empty plains of Wyoming in no particular direction – suddenly shows up on a video monitor to gleefully congratulate his mutated research subject on orphaning all kinds of kids. Go Red Blazer! I like to think that during his off-screen time, Doctor Morgan was off exposing more Martian housemaids and butlers to Earth atmosphere and watching them drop like flies. I bet he found it funny, and still laughs when he thinks of fields of freshly upturned, bumpy earth stretching out as far as the eye can see …

Speed Comics #35 (Not to be confused with Uppers Adventures or Tales of the Amphetamine)

I’ve spent the last few years divesting myself of my gargantuan comics collection – I’ve dropped from 15,000 comics to eleven, so you know I’m serious. If I ever did take up collecting again, though, I think I’d have to make the theme of my collection Comic Book Covers Where Whoa Damn Too Much Shit Is Going On Seriously Now.




What I don’t get about this cover is what the Girl Commando down in the bottom right hand corner is doing with that rifle. Was she trying to break the winch? Because if she did, you know, *bloop* goes the Black Cat right into the acid. “Like I even care,” I imagine her saying, “Bitch dresses like a whore.” *smash*