COSTUME DRAMA : WHEN SUPERMAN TURNED YELLOW

Action Comics No.236 – Superman’s New Uniform
New Adventures of Superboy No.18 – January 1981
There’s probably no more iconic superhero costume in the history of the genre than Superman’s, but that didn't keep ‘em from tricking it out like a tile floor in the Shining hotel but wearing a red belt. Likewise, that didn't hinder the happenings of Action Comics No.236, January 1958, where Superman ditched his familiar red-and-blues for something that looked a little like a banana blowing a spit bubble.

When Professor Xavier Carlton ask Superman to doff his familiar togs so the scientist can test an exploding robot (“Fantastische, he explodes exactly as I hoped! Muzzer vill be so pleased” I imagine him saying so that my use of quotation marks won’t be entirely misleading), the Man of Steel leaves the premises in an ersatz suit poorly engineered to handle the extremes of super-exertions common to everyday heroics. Turns out Xavier Carlton is actually evil scientist Lex Luthor, which is something I’m sure Superman would have noticed if only he’d had any kind of super-ability relating to seeing through disguises, hearing and recognizing individual heartbeats, or generally having any sort of super-senses which would make a rubber mask and fright wig and unacceptable effort to delude him.

When the phony supersuit begins to fall apart, split at the seams, catch fire and just generally unravel like a sweater in an old Bugs Bunny cartoon, Superman returns to the professor who blames the suddenly shoddy workmanship on his exploding robot experiment and makes it up to Superman by creating a replacement costume out of a life raft and gumball machine.

Now every rescue at sea is a PARTY! ♫ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ ♫

Now decked out in the traditional super-villain secondary palette, astronaut bubble helmet (with a hole in it so Superman can use his superbreath, so WHAT IS THE POINT?), and “SUPERMAN” emblazoned across the chest, Superman is now in possession of a costume which features the following accessories:

• Wings on his boots, so he doesn’t make any sort of flying noise, which according to this story is “WHOOSH”. Maybe he just has wind. Also, the wings are powered by atomic motors on his ankles, so I’m sure that won’t ever be a problem.
• A radio receiver and transmitter in his helmet, which is handy for a guy with super hearing and super ventriloquism. 
• It glows in the dark
• Gloves. For that evening look.
• A giant green ANTI KRYPTONITE BELT which is labeled as such so as to make it pretty much the first thing you’re going to want to take off the guy and also it’s lead-lined so Superman can’t see through it, but I guess he ain’t care? 

Naturally the anti-kryptonite belt is LOADED with Kryptonite, like OOPS! ALL KRYPTONITEBERRIES loaded, and eventually the lead chips away slowly exposing Superman to the stuff and casually snuffing him, allowing Luthor to show up in another rubber mask and Superman’s costume pretending to be the real Superman, which wouldn’t have been part of my plan if I were in charge of this. Just shoot the guy, super-genius, we got stuff to do.

Here’s some things which could have been on the costume, but weren’t:

• Clown shoes
• An Elizabethan collar
• A codpiece with built-in jacob’s ladder
• An aqualung full of pancake batter and another one full of maple syrup, strapped to his back underneath his cape and feeding out through nozzles along his sleeves so he can make pancakes for hungry orphans with a mere gesture, if he ever stumbles across any.
• His name and address stitched into the back of his underwear so it doesn’t get mixed up with the other boys at super-camp
• Two thongs laid one over the other, back to front
• An “I’m with A Kryptonian Babootch” t-shirt that has an arrow pointing to the side

Well, at least his balls, butt and back remain invulnerable.

Superman shrugs it off eventually and reclaims his regular longjohns from Luthor’s Laundry of Doom, but this isn’t the only time he’d dressed up as a nauseating flavor of Laffy Taffy (i.e. any of them). For instance, in New Adventures of Superboy No.18 (June 1981), young Clark Kent takes Lana Lang’s sartorial sarcasm to heart and makes an effort to change his look. Unravelling his super-suit, he adds in more yellow from his bullet-proof baby blankets and becomes the lemon-hued avenger of justice. I like the blue cape, myself. The rest of it looks like a rogue Froot Loop fighting crime.

Eventually, the new sour lemon splash Superboy realizes that the yellow costume is reflecting most of the yellow sunlight he depends on in order not to suck while on Earth, and he abandons it for his old togs, although doesn’t this suggest that Superman is just bogarting the lion’s share of an indestructible yellow super-costume somewhere? There’s only a little bit of yellow on the existing costume, he must have almost two or three yards of the stuff in a Linen Closet of Solitude. GIVE THAT SHIT TO ROBIN, you ever see how often Batman hides behind that kid when crooks show up? That boy is in for trouble in them bare legs and fancy short-sleeve vest, he could use a bullet-proof pajama bottom.

GONE & FORGOTTEN REVISITED: CLASH OF TITANS - THE JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA VERSUS HAUNTED PANTS

I don't understand how "Battle Against the Bodiless Uniforms" doesn't just mean the same thing as "Laundry Day."

Back in Justice League of America (vol 1) #35, the League had the honor of getting to fight not only against their own recently worn leggings and panty liners, but also the recently worn and left-to-hang-around-without-getting-washed boxers of their greatest enemies (well, some of their enemies, anyway. “Greatest” is a particularly loaded term).

Meet Abnerdaddle, Gussie and Fart,
the pink pashas of mayhem.

Technically, their prominent enemies in this tale - the ones with agency - were a trio of demonic, acromegalic albino monster brothers from the dawn of time, the sinister and gibberish-monikered Abnegazar, Rath and Gast, whom the League had earlier battled in Justice League of America #10.

To be honest, I always liked these guys (even though their heyday was well before my time). They had an ominous, unlikely origin, they were primordial evils, and they looked like someone took a Spirograph to a handful of skinned chihuahuas on PCP. They had an air of amoral menace which a lot of super-villains of the Silver Age lacked, but then again in this issue they’re going to make Batman fight his own socks, so maybe I’m projecting.

In this case, Akhenaton, Kunta Kinte and Gah-Boogie-Boogie have hatched the kind of Byzantine plan which makes you wonder why people get into evil sorcery in the first place, inasmuch as it seems like a whole lot of fuckin’ trouble. Having been entombed in impenetrable energy cocoons by Green Lantern and buried in three remote spots around the Earth, the three big-headed brothers enact some sort of goddamn improbable backup plan wherein they summon the spare uniforms of the Justice Leaguers to their aid.

Evidently, Gateface, Woodentooth and Ginalollabrigida had the foresight – during their earlier battle with the JLA – to imbue the heroes’ uniforms with magical energy, just in case they’d ever need Wonder Woman’s support garments to do their bidding (wait, actually, as I say it out loud, it no longer seems so crazy).

The satanic siblings then mentally command the bewitched wardrobe to all rub up on a series of magical items held in the JLA’s trophy room (the Red Jar of Calythos, the Green Bell of Uthool, and the Silver Wheel of Nyorlath and I know it sounds like I’m just making up nonsense words but I swear I ain’t) and, having done so, find the hidden prisons of the beelzebubbic brothers and rub off a little magic onto them so they boys can bust out.

Oh for god's sake, just ball it up
into a wad and huck it in the hamper.

BUT, the suits apparently forgot to frot sufficiently against the magic miscellanea, requiring the disabled demons to send them BACK out into the world, this time with the mystical mission of passing more magic into the disembodied duds of several JLA villains (The Pied Piper, Killer Moth, Dr.Polaris, and then Dagon and The Mask, or as I like to call ‘em, The Heavy Hitters Squad), which then take on the appearance of the actual villains.

So, the empty-villain-suits (made to look like they are full of actual villains) get into a knock-down, drag-out with the League, during which they take extra pains to tear up and muss the costumes that the heroes happen to have on at the time. The heroes take the villain-costumes to jail, and then change into their spare costumes, which – oh heavens no! – happen to be the uniforms which Abernathy, Godzooky and Petulaclark had earlier imbued with some particularly sad-ass ineffective magic.

But wait, their devious plan proceeds unabated! The magically enchanted (evil) socks and (villainous) codpieces and the (frilly lavender) panties (that Killer Moth wears and he hopes no one ever finds out about because he’d be the laughing stock of Gotham, but damn it, they make him feel confident and sure of himself, just like a beautiful lady, and what’s so wrong about that?) escape from jail, which is okay because I’m pretty sure you can’t prosecute a sweater vest. Except in Texas. In Texas, you can execute a sweater vest.

Goddamnit, you people.

Engaged in another knuckle-duster with their enemies’ assorted banana-hammocks and over-the-shoulder boulder holders, the Leaguers wear themselves out subduing the laundry (over eight action-packed pages of folding action like you’ve never seen).

The Justice League is a buncha goddamn complainers is what.

It turns out that this – this, my friends – this is the pivotal part of the sinister plan of Aunt Ethel, George Wendt and Ernesto, evil demon brothers from the beginning of time! Because now that the Justice League is exhausted, the (weak ass) magic in their spare uniforms takes them over and brings them to the locations of the brothers’ individual prisons, whereupon the heroes are forced to collect the earlier-mentioned enchanted errata (the Blue Bell of Blah-blah, the White Wheel of Whupsie-Daisy, the J … J … the Jar of Bluhbluhbluh, I don’t even remember) and use their (exhausted) powers to free the evil trio.

SOME PLAN.

You know what my big evil super sinister escape plan is? It’s a gun. I shoot it at the first guy who tries to put me in an impenetrable energy prison. Who knows if it’ll work, it’s worth a try, at least it won’t be as stupid or ineffectual as what Abevigoda, Rizzumrazzum and Googledotcom tried to pull off.

You super-heroes are slobs. Next issue, Green Arrow shows up in sweats and a t-shirt with holes in the collar.

Speaking of which, you might be wondering if their plan did indeed work … and it did indeed work, indeed! Not only did they trick the Justice League into freeing them, but they imprisoned the Leaguers themselves, and then – only five panels away from total victory – vanished into the ether. Why and wherefore? Let’s let the Justice League explain for themselves.

Goddamnit, you assholes.

TRULY GONE AND FORGOTTEN : SUPER GREEN BERET

When young, “pure” Tod Holton – that’s not me being creepy, the book makes a point of repeatedly mentioning his purity – is given a gift of a magic beret, he finds that he can tap its tremendous power to transform into the powerful adult body of Super Green Beret, a strapping soldier with the power of magic on his side, and who is also unable to come up with a better name.

Tod’s uncle Roger was made a gift of the magical beret by a South Vietnamese monk who blessed the headgear as thanks for Roger having saved him and his monastery from villainous Viet Cong soldiers but mostly from wild pigs (true! Moppin up the Viet Cong was almost an afterthought). Now, having given the enchanted hat to a young boy, “pure” (geez), the monk is able to communicate with the heroic Super Green Beret and telepathically alert him to trouble spots around the world.

Tod's a real whiz at history.

Although he proves early on that he has the power to turn men to stone (or, at least by way of demonstration, to turn tree trunks that he pretends are men into stone, thereby proving that the greatest power is imagination), Super Green Beret primarily uses his amazing powers on the order of pranks; he turn grenades into fresh fruit, bombs into bouquets, and tanks into tank parts – although primarily he likes to use branches, guns and planks as clubs and beat the livin’ tar out of people. A “salute” allows him to caress the magic badge which powers his supernatural headgear, and whatever Tod can imagine is made to happen.

Created by Otto Binder, inspired maestro of the silver age, Super Green Beret shares much in common with company-mate Fatman The Human Flying Saucer, in that he bears more than a passing resemblance to the original Captain Marvel; Tod owns a magic beret instead of a magic word, and Super G-B’s powers exceed even those of Cap, but the aged wizard shepherding the young hero who changes from boy to man by way of magic seems a little familiar. Tod even bears more than a passing resemblance to Billy Batson, particularly by way of a red sweater and blue jean being his go-to look. I like to assume a Super Green Beret Jr and a Mary Green Beret were in the works.

Over the course of his two issues, Super Green Bean only spends a little time in South Vietnam, findin himself called to trouble spots in a South American nation (stopping the would-be revolution of a Fidel Castro-a-like), a volcano-plagued African kingdom and, um, Nazis and then Valley Forge. He got around, that Super Green Beret.

Besides the thought-waves pouring into his mind, of course.

TRULY GONE & FORGOTTEN : THE MAN FROM S.R.A.M.

This is like one of those two-page origin spread Alex Ross does, but with a head injury.

Another one-shot oddity from Otto Binder, mad king of the Silver Age! The Man from SRAM (That’s “Mars” spelled backwards, and you’ll probably want to get used to inverted words from here on out) clocks in at one whole backup adventure in the pages of Jigsaw #2, part of the Harvey Thriller line of titles, drawn by Carl Pfeufer.

You know what they say - when life gives
you lemons with human faces on them,
squeeze until you get lemonade?

The tongue-in-cheek adventure involves the secret Martian agent seeking out agents of an insidious organization – FINK – on Earth. FINK, which stands for “Fiendish Interplanetary Nasty Killers” (we never learn what, if anything, SRAM stands for except that it’s “Mars” spelled backwards for no apparent reason) stages a plan to destroy the Earth on the set of a big-budget Hollywood sci-fi movie (“big budget”, being the Sixties, means “about forty clams”).

The shape-changing Man from SRAM possesses a number of other amazing powers, including the ability to transmute matter, walk through walls, and reverse words constantly – wait, that might just be a neurological condition. Over the course of the story, we’re introduced to such inverted phonetic treats as Knif, Knits, Kook (well, there’s a gimme), Doog and Yllis, all for no apparent reason, as well as OFU which represents the Man from SRAM’s mode of transport, the Object Flying Upside Down (Later, there’s also an Unbeatable Flying Oriental Rug, or UFOR).

Apparently a nod towards DC’s recently introduced Martian Manhunter - who was also a tremendously powered Martian lawman disguised as a trenchcoated human – the daffy plotline made a lot of sense as a comedy, while the value and appeal of the inverted words gag remains, at best, a little gnilffab.

And I have Popeye arms.

ICE ICE BABY

Iceman - 4 issue limited series, 1984
It’s always difficult to imagine, but there was a time when – despite its runaway popularity and box office appeal – there was only a handful of X-Men books on the racks (and its rosters – where there were any – were pretty much consistent, but that’s an issue for another day). When it did come time to spin a few X-Men off into their own books, they were pretty judicious – there was obviously a Wolverine miniseries to be had, an expansion to the franchise by way of the New Mutants, and the fairly-relevant Magik limited series which tied into a storyline from the main book.

Additionally, they spun off solo adventures of some of their most popular characters, like Kitty Pryde riding shotgun on a second Wolverine miniseries, Nightcrawler getting his own interdimensional adventure and of course the most popular X-Man of them all – ICEMAN.

Looking at his history, it’s fairly obvious that the powers-that-be at Marvel considered Iceman a character with potential as a top-tier star, despite all indications to the contrary; he nailed some solo adventures, got to hop off to the Champions and the Defenders (with pals in tow – if any doubts existed as to Iceman’s possible popularity, he was paired with the Angel to get him over the hump), was one of Spider-Man’s amazing friends, and remember when they were teasing an Iceman/Wolverine rivalry in X-Men? They did, they really did, Iceman was going to throw down with Wolverine all the time. I would’ve loved to have seen it.

When Iceman finally got to have his name on the title of a book, it was a four-issue miniseries written by J.M.DeMatteis and which was all but fully removed from any contemporary storyline in the X-Titles or in The Defenders, the book which was Iceman’s then-monthly home. In fact, in large part because it was DeMatteis at the helm, the story is almost completely in the author’s wheelhouse – DeMatteis is a literate writer who exhibits surprising depth considering his medium, but it’s fair to say that he has persistent themes.

Also sometimes his prose sounds like Prog Rock lyrics read aloud.

To wit, the four issue series finds Iceman, aka Bobby Drake, returning home to his small, idyllic suburban home for a family reunion, and promptly collides with the combined menace of (DeMatteis Theme A) an overpowering cosmic force which represents an existential concept surrounding individual identity and perception of the self and (DeMatteis Theme B) mommy and daddy issues.

Frankly, the book is only shy from being the penultimate DeMatteis project by the absence of a comical creature with a yen for Yiddish, although it does have a pair of cosmic henchmen known as White Light and The Idiot, drivetime radio hosts of the dimension at the end of time. They’re sent off under orders of OBLIVION, an ominous cosmic entity who’s blasting his biceps, takes colloidal silver treatments, and wears a pizza joint tablecloth as a hat.

"May I offer you a bucket full of Creatine?

As it happens, Bobby Drake is suffering an identity crisis (DeMatteis Theme C) owing to his parents’ expectations and his own uncertainty as the best path for his life. Throw into the mix a beguiling girl-next-door to dazzle Bobby and throw his self-reflection out of whack, and it takes spacetime assassins and time travel to sort it all out. That’s sort of DeMatteis Theme C.5, that last bit.

Enjoying a then-unprecedented amount of liberty with the character – who’d bothered to flesh out Iceman before now? -  JM’s able to give Iceman a coddling mother and disapproving father, as well as a combination Jewish AND Roman-Catholic background for MAXIMUM GUILT. Even having saved his relatives and hometown from an invading horde of cosmic Oblivion-sent monsters leaves the ex-X-Man wracked with self-doubt. Good thing this is exactly the kind of thing Oblivion likes to wander around the nether-dimension of nothing which he calls home showing people the futility of (pardon the dangling participle).

Oblivion’s seeking his wayward daughter, who also happens to be a time-travelling tin tyrant with a kidnapped family in tow AND the girl next door with whom Bobby fell immediately in love. Inadvertently chasing her through the timestream ends up sending Iceman back to the heady days of World War II, coincidentally being rescued from an over-eager cop’s hastily delivered warning shot (a little low and to the inside) by his own parents, years before their marriage and his birth.

He tells all this to a guy he's known for literally fifteen seconds.

Accidentally getting his father killed – and thereby wiping himself from the face of the Earth – is what launches Dematteis Theme D, the stream-of-consciousness miasma of the self in which identity is sought but only mocking semblances of friends and family arise to undermine the hero’s confidence. Can you believe that’s one of this fella’s go-to things?

In the end, it’s a combination of having confronted his own oblivion and losing the girl he’s imprinted upon for reasons of narrative convenience which get Bobby Drake to a good place in his relationship with his parents. Meanwhile, in Wolverine’s solo book, he fought ninjas and Nightcrawler fought alien pirates. But no, this is good, therapy, that’s just as much fun as ninjas and pirates.

Misandry. 

BATMAN LEADS AN INTERESTING LIFE : BAT-HAND-ME-DOWNS

Detective Comics No.226 December 1955
Detective Comics No.235 September 1956

I’m trying to decide what it would feel like to be a child flipping through the old family photo albums and to discover pictures of your father at your age wearing absolutely the same clothes you’re currently wearing, and then flipping further on to find photos of your grandfather wearing the same clothes your father is currently wearing. Basically having two outfits which were worn by your family at two different stages of life, one for childhood and one for adulthood, on and on all the way down through history. What are you, Amish? You can’t be, you have a photo album. Check and mate! Clearly there’s time travel involved and you’re your own grandfather.

"I'm going to be going to jail for a very long time, chum"

That’s precisely what happened to Robin over the course of two issues in the 1950s – which is to say, he discovered a lot of hand-me-down fighting togs in the family attic, not that he was his own grandfather (although let’s check with Grant Morrison to make sure that wasn’t in the outline).

In Detective Comics No.226, it’s revealed that Bruce Wayne spent some time parading around in a Robin costume hoping to get an older man to notice him. Using the garish red-and-green ensemble to hide his identity, young Bruce Wayne plies the world’s greatest detective Harvey Harris for tips on how to become a detective himself. While dodging Harris’ attempts to uncover his dual identity, the adolescent Bruce Wayne adopts the moniker “Robin” (on Harris’ suggestion), which means that Robin had no say whatsoever in anything to do with the adoption of his costumed identity – he didn’t pick the colors, he didn’t base the costume on his circus togs, he didn’t even get to choose the name (It is pretty amusing that pre-teen Brue Wayne was running around in a tunic with an “R” on it but didn’t particularly have an idea what it might stand for. Maybe he was a junior Republican senator, or maybe it stood for “hope”).

Not that Batman had a lot of say in his costumed identity, although I’m sure it helped when years after his preteen career a bat came smashing through his window, giving him an opportunity to realize that bats are awesomer than Robins and only a dumb idiot would dress up as a fat bird to fight crime. “Criminals are a really judgmental lot and they will give a dude tons of shit for dressing like a canary or whatever the fuck” he says as his butler cleans up dead bat parts and broken glass.

"You can wear it after our brutal murder, son."

No, it turns out that Batman’s dad once dressed as a bat as part of a themed masquerade ball celebrating “flying things”, which is what the idle rich do with their free time I guess. I don’t know what I expected, they’d be shooting rats at the dump with a .44? Of COURSE they have “flying things balls” - check your biology textbooks for clarification.

Not only did Bruce’s pe-paw dress as a grey-and-blue Bat years before the internet had feels about it, he also beat up a criminal. Dumb move, dad-bat, that crook was Lew Moxon who in turn hired Joe Chill who murdered Thomas and Martha Wayne and whooaaaaaa hold on a second, Batman’s origin just became a little bit messier. It wasn’t random crime? I guess it does give Batman a chance to scare a second crook into an untimely death (That’s TWO! Not counting all the hobos he terrorizes at dive bars down at the wharf) but it puts a weird spin on the “war on crime” element when it turns out there was a coherent chain of cause and effect at play.

Anyway, to my dismay neither issue ends with discovering that, in the future, Robin will dress like Batman and Batman will dress like Alfred and Alfred will dress like Aunt Harriet, meanwhile Joker has to dress like The Penguin and Two-Face dresses like Catwoman and Batgirl goes around dressed like Harvey Bullock. He’s the richest man in Gotham City but everybody has to wear their older brothers’ hand-me-downs. So everybody dress up like someone else, it’s a fancy Bat-dress party!

"Shoot through the boy he invariably chooses to hide behind!"

TRULY GONE AND FORGOTTEN : THE LIEUTENANT MARVELS

Not you buddy, we're busting you back to Corporal.

Fawcett Comics’ motto was surely “Stick with what works”, which is why they turned their highest-selling superhero – the big red cheese, Captain Marvel – into a franchise. Mary Marvel, Captain Marvel Jr and even Hoppy the Marvel Bunny followed in the Captain’s yellow-booted footsteps - as did an unpowered “Uncle Marvel” who spent an inordinate amount of time hovering around underage Mary Marvel all the time, jeez, do we have a Child Protective Services Marvel around here?

Also part of the Captain’s entourage were his Lieutenant Marvels, a trio of similarly powered, similarly suited, similarly dubbed super-adjuncts who made themselves available whenever Cap needed a little extra muscle power without the threat of bringing in someone who threatened to become more popular.

The three Lieutenants gained their power the same way as Cap, by invoking the name of the wizard Shazam and thereby being bestowed with the same array of powers. Of course, we all know the word “Shazam” stands for:

S – Strength, lots of it
H – Hella toughness
A – A Cape
Z – Zoom, look at him go, he is fast
A – Also boots
M – For the many things she gave me.

While Captain Marvel is Billy Batson, famous radio reporter and ward of the state, the Lieutenants are also three young men named Billy Batson; a tough Brooklyn tubbo kindly named Fat Billy, a country cousin equally kindly nicknamed Hill Billy, and a tall drink of water who I don’t think had anything going for him and was called Tall Billy. What would they have done if two of them were fat? Anyway, when not addressed by their collective name, the trio were individually addressed as Fat Marvel, Hill Marvel and Tall Marvel, which probably did wonders for their self-esteem.

Gifted conversationalists, the lot of 'em.

Although they popped up fairly often in the Shazam books – more often in the Seventies’ revival than the original Forties incarnation, really – there’s not been a lot of depth given to the characters, which seems a shame. Maybe Fat Marvel killed a guy, maybe Hill Marvel’s on meth, maybe Tall Marvel knows how to knit. These guys could be interesting, they ought to be given a chance (They should not be given a chance).

They also had a song. It went like this:
“Marvels here, Marvels there
Marvels, Marvels everywhere
We chase evil to its lair and beat it
Marvels short, Marvels tall
Marvels, Marvels one and all
When we hear our duty call we meet it
We don’t know what to do
We’re always in the dark
Living on a powderkeg an giving off sparks
Awwwww suffragette!”

It went exactly like that.

GONE & FORGOTTEN REVISITED : THE GREEN TEAM Part 2

The Green Team Continued : Their Unpublished Adventures
In their unpublished adventures – available through something delightfully dubbed “Cancelled Comics Cavalcade” and which was a real “get” for many years of fandom prior to the internet, we’re given a glance at what the Simon/Grandenetti team might've created if given a free reign to populate their weird little corner of the DC Universe with more of their signature inventions – lightly subversive action-adventure with a liberal dash of pure nutcakery thrown in to keep the kids quiet.

I do love me the Simon/Grandetti team, I have vivid fantasies about what they would have come up with if they’d been given the wide-open opportunity to create new titles higgledy-piggledy. What do you think, a super team of corporate mermaids? A cowboy dentist astronaut? A talking end table that is also magic and it fights communist unicorns? I DON’T FUCKIN’ KNOW, anything is possible on the world that may have been after the DC Implosion.

In any case, The Green Team did not – technically – make it beyond the pages of DC First Issue Special (That’s DC’s fault in the first place for not creating Second Issue Special, Third Issue Special, and frankly The Rest Of The Issues Specials. Seems to me they were flat-out jinxing some of these guys), not even in the “New Krypton” arc of the Superman comics from a few years back, where other First Issue Special losers like Jack Kirby’s Atlas, The Outsiders and Codename: Assassin and just general We-Need-Our-Copyrights-Renewed-ers like the Creature Commandos and Ultra the Multi-Alien made (at the very least) cameo appearances, if not pivotal narrative roles. Hell, I’m not a hundred percent sure that Lady Cop wasn't actually Metropolis police captain Maggie Sawyer.

The larger issue here is that The Commodore clearly has no idea how big a man is.

The first unpublished episode of the Green Team’s laughably unlikely ongoing comic sees three of the Team engaged in wild adventures around the world and the one of these things that is not like the other running errands like he’s the help. See if you can guess which one.

Yes, while oil tycoon J.P.Houston is dune-buggying around Spain, shipping magnate Commodore Murphy is baffling Russian fishing vessels in the West Indies and filmmaker Cecil Sunbeam is hiring the Italian army to slug each other on camera because wealth distorts all common sense and proportion apparently, Abdul is hauling a bunch of orphans to the bodega for Doritos.

In many ways, Abdul is the driving force of this story, inasmuch as he spends the first third of it “missing” – which is to say, the other Green Team members are out having adventures and kibitzing about Abdul’s absence, but meanwhile he’s just back at home and they “forgot” to invite him along on anything fun. I mean, what is he, the Wolf of Shoeshine Alley? What’s he gonna be doing to compare to the everyday adventures of the other guys, staging a hostile takeover of rival shoeshine boys? Cornering the market on messed-up rags? Inventing the hover-brush?

Someone gave that cowboy kid a gun full of barbituates and all Abdul gets a shoeshine box and a change of pants.

Anyway, storylines essentially collide as the Commodore slips unnoticed by a fleet of Russian fishing vessels to find a hidden cove of giant mutant lobsters commanded by an apparently sea-breathing, deformed old man named “Seaman Jackson” (of the Atlantis Jacksons, I presume) and, for his part, Abdul notices that seafood sure is expensive. Woo, and how about that airplane food? Dentist’s offices, am I right, Abdul is here all week folks tip your waitresses.

The thrust of the story builds increasingly towards a conflict between the boy Green Teamers – desperate to purchase Seaman Jackson’s giant lobster pals (which sounds like the cheapest brand-name frozen breaded seafood treats you only could buy on the Estonian black market) in order to combat worldwide high seafood prices, except why they are rich what do they care – and the Russians, who are really just trying to feed a whole nation. Seems to me this story has put me on the side of the Soviet Union, congrats Green Team, now I’ll be the subject of jingoist barbs from provincial nitwits. I guess I’d better go back where I came from.

Hold on Abdul, first let's find a fair price for this man to sell his beloved family members for food.

The end result is a massive knife-fight between the Russian fishing vessels and the increasingly giant lobster monsters, now the size of ships, so maybe the best solution is the Green Team gets to have the lobster meat and the Russian’s get to use the hollowed out lobsters to replace the shipping vessels which were destroyed. You tell me that wouldn’t have been a cool ending. Nope, actually, it just ends in tears and then like four pages previewing the story for the next issue, since there wasn’t enough on the bones of this one to go a full twenty pages, whew…

The proposed second issue of The Green Team – The Deadly Paper-Hanger – introduces the most unusually empathetic take on an antagonist as I’ve ever seen, even in a Joe Simon comic, and this guy created Bee-Man.

When will you realize that not all of your problems can be solved with your guns full of barbiturates, JP?

The story begins with “J.P.” and Abdul going undercover in the poorest section of the bowery. As always, the Green Team are seeking out adventure, or at least some kind of problems at which they can throw money. I’ll pause here so you can make your own snide aside about how that’s exactly what whichever political party isn’t yours handles problems. No, no problem, I can wait. You done? All right.

Anyway, the boys go undercover for some nebulous reason I can only hope aren’t euphemistic, and are immediately caught in some sort of bum riot, which I also hope isn’t euphemistic. Coming to their rescue is (decked out in white overalls and bearing a bucket of paste, an armful of rolled posters and – for some reason – a hangman’s noose) The Deadly Paper Hanger, who is also – and I say this at risk of losing an argument on the internet – Adolf Hitler.

I think we've all had that dream where Hitler rescues you from a "typhoon of sweaty, struggling bodies."

Jawohl, it’s Herr Shickelgruber himself, Adolf Hitler, “down on his luck” since his big plan to “redecorate the world … went wrong.” You are going to witness, up through the conclusion of this story, a working class Adolf Hitler as a two-fisted, fearless brawler, a sympathetic character whom the boys of the Green Team embrace with po-faced sincerity and an absence of animosity. I bet they spent a lot of time hanging around Hitler and sort of nodding persistently towards Abdul when the little guy wasn't looking. “What about this guy, Adolf, huh? Whaddya think, hunh?”

The villain of the book is arguably a man named Saint Bernard and his welfare scam of a rescue mission, a horrible and degrading place which counts among its humiliating installations something called “The Man Wash.” There’s also a group de-lousing room and a giant vat of hot soup in which the bums are near-drowned, so basically it’s some sort of cross between the Carrousel from Logan’s Run and the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

This is just the beginning of "The Man Wash."

Throughout the course of the story, the Green team decide to help the downtrodden by prettying up their residences – trust me, it was an improvement over Abdul’s suggestion to ‘wipe them all out,’ and you should have seen how J.P. got laughed at for suggesting they help the poor get jobs – meaning the Paper Hanger gets to set up his big plot device: wallpaper with growth hormones and plant seeds embedded in it, causing whole room to blossom into gardens of Eden.

 Whoa, settle down Abdul.

This is one obfuscated metaphor, no two ways about it.

We discover ultimately that the garden-growing wallpaper is actually part of the Paper Hanger’s plan to gain revenge against a world which failed to recognize his genius, a plan which comes to its fruition when the plants start growing wildly, smashing buildings and threatening the lives of the bums who were hanging around for free fruit and shady groves. Oh wait, did I say the plan came to “fruition?” Gardens! Fruition! How clever! I’m going to give myself a biscuit for that one.


I've been pondering for weeks what the message here is, and as near as I can tell it's a metaphor
for the political tensions between Germany and Switzerland during the period of the Treaty of Versailles.
Or that Hitler hates dogs. And trees explode. I DON'T FUCKIN' KNOW ACTUALLY IS WHAT.

Ultimately, the Paper Hanger and St.Bernard alike are apparently swallowed in the aftermath of an explosion, leaving the Green Team to wander around in the subsequent destruction and … poke at things with sticks. This is action in the purest sense of the word!

D-USTPAN!

I probably don’t need to underline how odd it was that Simon – again, co-creator of Captain America, as well as the one-time top-sellers The Boy Commandos – seemed to take it so easy on Hitler. It’s as if he was saying, “Hey, I gave the guy enough grief, let’s take it easy on Hitler.” You know, reclining back in his chair, “Let’s give Hitler a fair shake.”

I think there’s a lesson there for all of us. I have no idea what that lesson is, but it’s probably there for all of us. Somehow. For some reason. I guess.

So, you're saying it's not a rock?

BATMAN LEADS AND INTERESTING LIFE : BATMAN AND KAMANDI

The Brave and the Bold No.120 July 1975 – This Earth is Mine!

The Bob Haney-scripted issues of Brave and the Bold have been enjoying something of a critical renaissance lately, having been rediscovered for the bizarre but highly palatable, narratively layered and simultaneously absurd yet heartfelt stories that the man was so skilled at crafting. The worst you can say about Bob Haney is that he unveils the ludicrous with po-faced sincerity, which is a helluva compliment in this medium where the daffiest bullshit usually has to be accompanied by a foil-cover on a twelve-part maxiseries.

So when Batman manages to end up in the post-apocalyptic future because magic-adept colonists hiding out from bear-people inside the hollow heads of Mount Rushmore wished him into a time-travel coma, you take it with a sort of sincere appreciation of an inexpensive yet thoughtful gift given for no particular reason.

They are hands-down lucky
they didn't accidentally summon
The Joker...

Kamandi, of course, was Jack Kirby’s spin on the Planet of the Apes idea, with the last human boy on Earth (more or less) salvaging some kind of meaningful existence from a world where humanoid animals had effectively taken control – barbaric dominance, mind you, but still control – over a hellish, demolished landscape littered with the Ozymandian remnants of a once proud culture. It’s not easy to bring Batman into a world like that, but you could get Batman onto an episode of The Flintstones if there’s ducats to be made from it, believe you me.

When he does appear, there’s some convenient bluffing made of an aggressive ape patrol (“Ape Patrol”, coming this Summer from Fox) and Batman adopting the identity of “Captain Bat”, a mutant bat-person. This is a pretty good trick, since Batman’s costume doesn’t look so much like a bat as it does a glam rocker’s rubber fetish ferret outfit. He looks like if Marc Bolan costumed a production of The Wind In The Willows.

Chasing Kamandi up through the hills through Mount Rushmore, Batman discovers that he’d been summoned across time and space by the wishful thinking of a hidden enclave of beleaguered comic book fans hiding out in Teddy Roosevelt’s sinuses (no kidding, really). Hiding from mutant bears who are also park rangers in the most Hanna-Barbera-esque irony of all time, the hidden human clan uses “magic powder” to bring Batman to their post-apocalyptic key party, and a Seventies’ style cassette tape player to simulate commands issuing from the heads on Mount Rushmore.

You know, on a side note, I recently tried to explain to a Millennial friend of mine how those old cassette tape players worked, and we hit a real sticking point when I described how you had to simultaneously press “record” and “play” in order to start recording. “What happens if you only pressed record?” she asked with increasing terror, “What if there was no tape in it!?” I felt like I was describing how me and the other cave-men first domesticated the wild horses of the plains, or how my post-apocalyptic clan confused the mutant bears.

By the end of the story “Captain Bat” (alternatives: Major Murcielago, First Mate Fledermaus, Parson Pteropodidae) invites Kamandi to come back to present-day, pre-apocalyptic Gotham City with him, which is much better than the blasted landscape with all the mutant animals in it because it’s only a crime-ridden hellhole full of crocodile men and murder clowns where even the former DA puts babies into deathtraps for a living. HOW exactly Batman intended to manage that is up in the air, since he was apparently in a coma the whole time and I guess that would mean if Kamandi were in the present then his body would be in a coma in the future? I dunno, all I know is it sucks they don’t have Elseworlds any more because Kamandi would have been a pretty interesting successor to Dick Grayson’s Robin …

TRULY GONE AND FORGOTTEN : YANK AND DOODLE

This happen next season on Downton Abbey. Spoilers.

Among the roster of patriotic avengers who've adorned comics since the inception of the super-hero, surely there have never been two more obnoxious dicks than Yank and Doodle, the chest-bumping bro-hams of the spandex circle. Their modern-day equivalents would almost certainly use homophobic slurs over Xbox Live and reek of Axe.

The wartime teenaged duo was, when unmasked, the wealthy and athletic twins Rick and Dick Walters – yes, Rick and Dick, I do not know how that works since they’re both short for “Richard”. Perhaps they’re Rickard and Richard, or Ricardo and Richard, or Dichard and Richard, or Richard 1 and Richard 2, or some other indicator of remarkably lazy parentage. Here’s another; while other superheroes hid their alter-ego’s derring-do behind acts of timidity, meek manners and physical awkwardness, such was not a reality for young athletes Rick and Dick – so they hid behind a disguise of being horrible entitled jackasses.

Our heroes.

When not shoving around youngsters at summer camp, the unaccountably wealthy jagoffs were busy tormenting their butler and his innocent son. In this typical adventure, for instance, Rick and Dick (who am I kidding, they’re both dicks) unleash abuse both verbal and physical in nature upon their aged butler, secure in the knowledge that he’s bound by threat of reprisal to accept their beating, mockery an belittling willingly, if begrudgingly. But wait, they've abused the butler so badly that he’s sent his own son away, because they've also been abusing him! Then they put on costumes and fight “bad guys”, which by all rights should be a mirror.

Yank and Doodle were most likely emotionally stunted owing to the trauma of losing their mother in childbirth, and emboldened by the fact that they somehow developed unbeatable super-strength when in one another’s presence. Keep in mind that they never restricted the use of their super-strength to their costumed identities – they happily used it to bolster their own athletic careers. Born on third and swearing they hit a triple, it’s Yank and Doodle!

A fine cherry on top of their loathsome sundae, Yank and Doodle also have the honor of inadvertently naming the once-and-only assemblage of Prize Comics heroes. In Prize Comics #24, Yank and Doodle joined sub-zero superhero Doctor Frost, nighttime avenger Black Owl, comedic characters The General and The Corporal and mystic Green Lama in battling the Frankenstein Monster, a menace (up to that point) who’d had his own feature in the book for some time. Having defeated the monsters, Doodle dubs the group “I guess we’re just … an invincible bunch of guys!” It looks terrific on the letterhead.

They weren't.

GONE & FORGOTTEN REVISITED : THE GREEN TEAM Part 1

The Green Team
Personal jetplanes, luxury yachts, cash-laden jumpsuits and an absence of parental oversight, what do all of these things add up to? That’s right, celebrity sextapes, but how about also DC Comics’ original answer to the question Richie Rich was just too square to ask, man, it’s The Green Team.

"We'll have a soft-serv ice cream machine and a toppings bar"

The Green Team has recently experienced a reinvention inside the Nu52 as Teen Trillionaires - where they managed to pull an eight-issue run prior to cancellation. You can’t deny an eight-issue run isn’t too bad, particularly considering that the originals debuted in the second issue of the just-a-little-inappropriately titled “First Issue Special” and then died before anything could come of it except unpublished inventory stories available for decades only as photocopies handed around at cons.

Created by writer Joe Simon and artist Jerry Grandenetti, the Green Team is, of course, lead vocalist Billie Joe Armstrong, bassist Mike Drint and drummer Tre Cool, and they redefined punk for the 90s. Beyond that, the Green Team is, in increasing order of hair length and starting – like all wealth culture does – with the white kids:

Commodore Murphy: A shipping magnate who, despite his youth, dresses like Thurston P.Howell joining McHale’s Navy.

J.P.Huston: Boy oil magnate and son of mustachioed private detective Matt Houston and his wife Whitney (maybe)

J.P. and Murph score all the choice dialogue and action in the stories, leaving the other two Green Teamers a little less to do. This might have something to do with who they are, simply because:

Cecil Sunbeam: Boy film director and the first of two problematic character portrayals in the book, being as he’s a flamboyant, outrageous, Hollywood boheme type, and the implication in his manner of dress and expression is that he might be – and pardon my late Sixties terminology here, but - the fruit of the group.  He doesn’t get enough screen time for us to determine whether this is a sort-of Antonio Fargas as Lindy portrayal of the savage dignity earned by the routinely despised, or if he’s merely a self-indulgent louche whose affectations are a tissue-thin façade for a two-fisted he-man. There's a chance this is my casting modern-day interpretations on an otherwise innocent portrayal, I'll cop. Still, whatever way, he doesn't get it as bad as…

Abdul Smith: Shoeshine kid and sucker.

The debut of the Green Team involves a convoluted arc of Abdul Smith, impoverished shoeshine kid from the ghetto whose lifelong dream is to be part of a club – any club, anywhere, and considering how poorly whitey treats him throughout this story, may I suggest the Black Panthers? How about the Nation of Islam?

Whoa. Up yours, honky.

Abdul eventually gets to join the Green Team, not because of his intelligence, drive, ambition or ingenuity, but because of an accounting error; the thirty-two clams in his bank account (which is, I believe, actually a million dollars in today’s money) is mis-deposited as five hundred thousand clams (or five super-mega-clams, metrically speaking). Before the bank can correct their own error and probably charge Abdul twenty bucks as a penalty, one of the young shoeshine boy’s loyal customers invests it for him and nets him the million-dollar entry fee into the Green Team.

The Green Team is one of Simon’s fairly subversive trilogy of titles for DC in the late Sixties and early Seventies – the other two being Brother Power and Prez – so while it’s impressive that he introduces a black character onto this team, the question of why Abdul has to fail upwards into the ranks of his partners is pertinent. There are black millionaires to be used as examples in this era – athletes and performers not the least of which, with neither career necessarily conflicting with the assorted industries monopolized by the white Green Teamers – but instead Abdul is catapulted from the streets by way of clerical error. If this doesn't seem weird to you, ask yourself why Abdul wasn't one of the original Green Teamers and one of the white kids had to accidentally join the ranks instead.

With Abdul effectively prohibited, story-wise, from every achieving parity with his peers in the team, he is left little choice but to remain “The other”. He actually ends up shoved to the side in subsequent adventures (and even on the cover, where he lingers so far in the back as to be practically absent), when in reality he’s the only Green Teamer to have been given any sort of backstory. Even in the 2013 revival, Abdul – the only African-American member – was jettisoned in favor of an Arabic prince. Abdul kind of deserves another shot.

That Spider-Man appearance is gonna come in handy for
some pub trivia night, keep it in mind.

In their pursuit of further wealth, the Green Team funds bizarre projects and, when the time comes for them to take a direct hand in protecting – or shutting down – their investments, they get decked out in fancy little green Dickies with four combination-locked pockets used to carry CASH MONEY. Even Don Draper had a Diners Club card – still, each member carries around a quarter million on them at all times, and then use them for such daring and innovative activities as – throwing it all on a roof and running away (this is true). I think this is actually part of their strategy to quickly divest Abdul of his million dollars so they can kick him out of the club and get back to telling jokes like "What would you call the Flintstones if they were black?" "Haw haw, good one Cecil!"

The Green Team advertise themselves via billboards bearing such enticing Craigslist-murderer-bait as "Boy Millionaires seek ACTION!" and "MONEY for THRILLS! ... We Pay for Play!" Another board reads "WANTED - Adventurous boys to join the GREEN TEAM" and then by way of small print, "Must Have A Million Dollars" all of which sounds suspiciously like a really transparent NAMBLA scheme. "Clean-Limbed boys wanted for big, exciting adventure. Must have million dollars, be willing to travel to Thailand. Orphans with no kin preferred."

What the NSA sees when it taps your webcam

As for the actual stories; Joe Simon was in a weird place with a lot of his DC work, undoubtedly unaided by the outright antipathy powerful editor and living harassment generator Mort Weisinger had towards Simon’s youth-celebrating work. In Brother Power, there were Nazi bikers and a villainous President Reagan (or “California” as I like to call it), in Prez there were robot chess maniacs and legless vampires, and in The Green Team there was down-on-his-luck Hitler and something called – lord help us – Professor Dinkle's Great American Pleasure Machine.

Rather than a novelty eatery at the upscale mall, the Great American Pleasure Machine (now the invention of Professor Apple. Poor Dinkle got recast. Long story) is a machine which is so adept at delivering pleasure that it’ll drive all entertainers out of business. That’s why a destructive marching band of evil is assembled to tear it down, and if they won’t do it then the comic book characters. Then, after that, the hookers!

Via a text piece in the back we gain insight into the origins of the Green Team, specifically that it's the invention of the heretofore-unseen P.T.Green, a multi-millionaire who pulled himself up from humble origins and decided to give back to the world by inventing an adventurers' club for idle rich kids (despite the fact that we already have one of those, it's called "The Kennedys"). Why he didn't form a club to assist the same kind of underprivileged kids he himself once was, I dunno, except I feel like it's a metaphor for capitalism in some way.

Lookin' like a million bucks.

Next Wednesday: The Unpublished Adventures!