TRULY GONE AND FORGOTTEN FOES : EGG-FU

ugh.

It’s hard to believe that, facing the apparent need to develop a food-based Chinese super-foe to bedevil Wonder Woman, that the creative team went with “Egg-Fu”, considering that General Tso was right there. Just give the guy a gun that turns people into chickens, ta-da, you’re done. Of course, it’s absolutely unbelievable that there was an apparent need to develop a food-based Chinese super-foe to bedevil Wonder Woman in the first place, but here we are – Egg-Fu!

I actually would've respected this whole endeavor a
little bit more if the sound effects had read
"CRANK CRANK CRANK" and "CLAACK!"

Debuting in Wonder Woman vol.1 No.157 back in October of 1965, Egg-Fu was possibly the unlikeliest-looking super-villain in the history of the form; even moreso than the world-devourer Galactus in his original short-pants, ‘Fu was intended to be a world-shattering menace and enemy of the freedom of man and he was a gigantic racist Easter Egg stuck in the ground whose Fu-Manchu moustache could be used as a weapon. “Hee-ho!” as said the big egg himself.

Even more amazing, Egg-Fu wasn’t just a one-timer; following his shattering dissolution at the hands of the Avenging Amazon, the lineage of Egg-Fu persisted, and Wonder Woman ended up facing his four-generations-removed descendant Egg Fu the Fifth! I’m shocked they didn’t call him Egg Fu Young, but whatevs, peeps, comics move fast. The horrifying part of this is realizing that Egg-Fu had three other descendants between himself and the relatively pint-sized Egg Fu the Fifth, Egg-Fu's two through four – lord, does it continue? Is there an Egg Fu 1,000,000 in the 853rd Century? Surely there should at least be a dozen of these guys, right? Each one a different size and wielding a different power? There, I actually just updated Egg-Fu for the twenty-first century, do I get to write the next big crossover event?

Actually, Egg-Fu WAS updated for the modern day in the pages of DC’s inaugural weekly comic book experiment Fifty-Two, in which he was reimagined by the power players scripting the series as a brilliantly evil mutant cyborg bearing – for some reason – the name of a prominent 4th century BC Taoist philosopher.  I dunno man, comics. Whatever the case, the revived “Chang Tzu” is a valuable reminder that there’s no such thing as a bad idea, only bad execution, which if there were ever a proper epitaph to put on the gravestone of comics, that there’s a contender.

As an outro, it’s worth mentioning that there’s a THIRD Egg Fu, his robot twin who bedeviled the Metal Men and went by the name “Dr.Yes”, because of spy movies. That’s why they do things in comics sometimes, because movies did something. Meanwhile, there’s yet to be any sort of villainous Chow Mein, Kung Pao, Won Ton, Dim Sum, Congee or Egg Roll even though you can readily picture racist caricatures and dumb pun-based powers for each of ‘em.

Oh NOW he can say "R" words.

GONE & FORGOTTEN REVISITED : THE DOG DAYS OF KRYPTO

There's two "L"s in "Kolli", because the
Superman writers think they're clever

"Hi, this is a very special and very different edition of Gone & Forgotten. Instead of reviewing some lousy comic, we're going to look back on the career of a beloved comic book institution, Krypto the Super-Dog! And the Super-Dog Family! Woof!

"I'm Kolli, Krypto's super-sweetheart. Don't sweat it if you don't remember me. Shortly after my only appearance, I was run over by Braniac's spaceship. Nonetheless, before my untimely demise, I did scatter Krypto's illegitimate pups all over the inhabited cosmos, so next time any of your unmanned Mars mission probes finds itself humped by super-powered dogs, you know what's going on.

"In any case, please enjoy reminiscing with some of Krypto's greatest friends and enemies - as if a dog could have friends and enemies - and try not to think about how we're all dead now."

"I AM KING KRYPTO AND I SENTENCE YOU TO DEATH!"

Hello visitors, I am Krypto, greatest of the Super-pets because I was Superman's favorite, and because Streaky and Comet aren't even really Kryptonian and Proty is a pile of snot! Ha ha! I am not only super-powerful, but also much smarter than any normal dog. Notice, for instance, that I have no desire to cram my nose into your crotch as a form of greeting. I have transcended that. Also, I do not eat feces or ruin the carpet. Only bad dogs would do that. I am not a bad dog. Krypto is a good dog.

The look of pure dumb malice on his
face just straight cracks me up.

THE ADVENTURES OF KRYPTO
In Adventure Comics No.262 (July 1959), Krypto becomes “The Colossal Superdog”, by which they mean “Colossal Menace”, after coming across a combination Kryptonite/Rainbow-Metal meteorite during a romp in space. The two meteors had either collided or were in the process of mating when Krypto happened upon it, and its combined Kryptonite/Rainbow radiations affected Krypto in a singular fashion. It’s also worth mentioning that the meteor looked a little like a space-butt.

Returning to Earth, three things happen to Krypto – one, he grows to a titanic size. Two, he goes mad, with one caption even coining the obvious but still delightful phrase “SPACE RABIES”. Lastly, he becomes paralyzed, firing his X-Ray eyebeams into space forever, sterilizing entire alien empires.

Superboy builds a memorial for his now-titanic pet and then leaves him there where he remains to this day, just off I-10 south of Phoenix. Bring the kids, they built a Dairy Queen and a Dinosaur Park around the back, it’s a real tourist destination.

KRYPTO’S FOES AND RIVALS

Who makes all these capes for dogs? 

"I am Swifty, one of about a billion super dogs who, over the course of the fifties and sixties, usurped Superboy's affections for Krypto and replaced him as a partner. I know we usually all turned out to be robots or Krypto in disguise, but still, if I were Krypto I wouldn't put up with Superboy's shit. You know what I mean?"

Arr! I am a pirate!

"And I am Destructo, who was Lex Luthor's pet dog! I was given super-powers so that I could help my master open a can of whoop-ass on Superboy and Super-Dog. Back in the Sixties, every one of Superboy's foes seemed to have a dog. Kryptonite Kid had the Kryptonite Bulldog there. I'm sure there would've been more villain dogs, but frankly, Superboy only HAD maybe two or three villains. Most of the time, he used his incredible super human strength to beat the hell out of penny ante gangsters and con men."

"I am Kryptonite Dog, and I like to eat beef jerky and fart noxious Kryptonite fart clouds everywhere."

It's true. Beef Jerky gives me the farts.

Actually, I was trained on the Shakespearean stage.

"Raaaagh! Me am Bizarro Krypto! Me make mess on carpet! Me eat own feces! Me hump all legs! Woof woof! Me am barking loud all night! Me am apeshit crazy!"

"Grr! Naff off Bizarro Krypto! I fucking hate you!"

Hilarious. ROLL, YOU FATTY!

THE ADVENTURES OF KRYPTO
In Superboy vol.1 No.64 (April 1958), Krypto becomes "The Rebel Super-Dog" when he begins to feel underappreciated by his master. Getting himself adopted by Lana Lang, who I think only did it so that she could ride around on Krypto's back like he was a tiny horse, the Superdog is shocked - SHOCKED, I tell you! - when Superboy adopts a NEW dog to replace his Kryptonian pal.

The replacement pooch is named "Hot Dog" and is a fat dachsund with no super-powers. In fact, in one of my favorite panels of all time, Krypto expresses his feelings towards Hot Dog by blowing his pudgy ass into a ditch.

Using Hot Dog as a means by which to humiliate his former pet, Superboy does the following things: Wraps Hot Dog up in bulletproof padding and uses him to deflect bullets, drags him across the sky by his leash so as to create a wiener-shaped shadow across Smallville (he has a reason, it wasn't just a fanciful whim), rolls him up like a wheel and rolls him down the sidewalk and then stuffs him in a missile made of spare car parts and throws him like four hundred miles to deliver a letter.

Krypto eventually reunites with Superboy, mostly to save Hot Dog's life I imagine.



THE MANY MOODS OF KRYPTO

It's not a purse, it's a satchel!

OOooh. Who could I be? Am I a be-yooo-tiful lady dog? HAHA!

No! I am Krypto! I flew through a Red Kryptonite comet once and, for forty-eight hours, was changed intoa beautiful collie dog. The master's girlfriend said I was so pretty. She petted me and gave me treats. She said I was the lovingest most special doggie in the universe. Even my master thought I was beautiful. He brushed my fur and threw many balls for me to chase.

Then the Red K wore off. "Surprise!" I said. "It is me, the beautiful dog you loved so much was me, plain old Krypto! Now you see that you only loved what is special inside of me!" They hugged me and said they liked me the way I was. Then they went off together and I was left alone for several hours.

They call me - no joke - Air Dale!

"This is one of my ingenious disguises. I am secretly a dog, but look, I am wearing glasses!"

No, Krypto, don't stick your
muddy tail in a hole to wash it.

THE ADVENTURES OF KRYPTO
In Superboy No.75 (September 1959), we learn "How Krypto Made History" when the superdog is first inspired to travel back in time. In search of fresh dinosaur bones, Krypto spins himself so quickly that he pierces the time barrier but, because he is a dog and stupid at this, he repeatedly fails to go back much further than a few decades at a time.

While hopping from era to era, Krypto manages to help Babe Ruth score his 60th home run, gets Washington across the Delaware, saves the Netherlands from flooding, does something with Robin Hood I didn't really understand, helps King Arthur remove the sword from the stone and then - having finally made it to prehistory - punches out a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Do you know what killed the dinosaurs? Krypto did.

Superboy brings Krypto back before he can eat a whole dinosaur skeleton in kind of a weird panel where kids may have been forced to confront the idea of death before they were really emotionally ready to process it  - when Krypto says "Oh boy! I found a pile of bones from some dinosaur that died here in a desert" it seems to be batting home the idea of mortality a little too hard for my tastes. People die and their remains are eaten by dogs, kids! Now go to sleep!


ALLIES OF KRYPTO

His eye didn't look like that before he got hit.

"Begorrah! I am Tail Terrier, Captain and chairman of the Space Canine Patrol Agency, a team of intergalactic, telepathic crimefighting dogs who made Krypto a member back in the Sixties. Every member was required to have a super-power; for instance, I possessed an infinitely elastic, malleable, prehensile tail I could use to lasso crooks. Krypto, by comparison, could flash fry us or stomp us into nothing with his mighty paws. We didn't mess with Krypto."

"By dame ib Tusky Husky,
adb by bib toobh ib ubeful
for obening dings. Bib Dob!
Bib Dob! Bow Wow Wow!"

"Other members of the team included Chameleon Collie, who could change his shape, Mammoth Mutt, who could inflate to a huge size and thereby become an easy target. There was also Precognitive Pup whose freakish head turned translucent and gave us views of the future. And lest I forget, there was also Paw Pooch, Hot Dog, Tusky Husky and Snoop Dogg."

"We'd meet in our galactic clubhouse and bark out our pledge:
"Big Dog Big Dog, Bow Wow Wow. We'll Stop Evil, Now Now Now!" Then we'd keep yapping and howling for half an hour or so. Mark Waid can't ever remember our anthem correctly. We mock him for it. I, personally, have dropped poopy on his house on more than one occasion, laughing heartily as we veer our hyper-dimensional cruiser through his rosebushes and do donuts on his lawn."

Sing our pledge along with us!

Big Dog Big Dog Bow Wow Wow

We’ll Stop Evil Now Now Now!

We’ll take a poop in evil’s shoe!

Cram our nose in villany’s crotch

And drag out butts on tyranny’s couch

Big Dog Big Dog Bow Wow Wow

Arf Arf Arf Yowlll GRRR

AWWWWW SUFFRAGETTE (fart)

"Our biggest enemies were these rogue, sentient cats who kept trying to feed us tainted hot dogs. It was a mess. A lot of them were the pets of Kryptonian villains who'd been condemned to the Phantom Zone - I mean, I sort of don't blame them for turning to evil! They get eternally banished to a twilight dimension of terror just because they happen to be the pet cats of criminals. Sometimes I think it's a blessing that Krypton exploded."

"You take that back or I'll KILL YOU! I'll KILL YOU!"

Then there's us, the Legion of Super-Pets. Here's a picture of us on the Celebrity Super-Pets edition of Jeopardy. Me? I'm Comet, Supergirl's pet horse who secretly used to be a human male, and I won the game when I bet it all on "Super-Pets who've claimed SuperGirl's maidenhead"

Besides me, Beppo the Super-Monkey is also a member. Beppo was sent into space on an experimental rocket built by Jor-El. Just like Krypto, the freaking thing got lost and he wandered through space for a bunch of decades. Freaking Jor-El. To say it was traumatic is to put too kind a face on it. Poor little monkey used to chew on his own dried feces and weep violently, haunted by terrifying dreams of endless blackness. Anyway, Beppo's put it all behind him. Of course, Beppo pretty much blew his mind on peyote during the Seventies when he moved to New Mexico to "find himself."

"I figure surviving begins with healing, and healing
begins with forgiveness. I forgive you Jor-El. Sob."

There was also Streaky the Super-Cat, who was kind of a fraud, but he was also a freaking wild man so we kept him around for the parties. Streaky got his super-powers from something called "Kryptonite-X," which SuperGirl "accidentally" slipped into a ball of yarn for him to play with. He only kept his powers for a little while, so after they'd wear off we'd make him go do the beer runs.

Then there was this little ball of shit named Proty. We kept him around for laughs. What a feeb.

"Okay, okay, that's
enough already."

Over the years, we've had a number of great adventures, but mostly we flew to the 30th century and beat up on the Legion of Super-Heroes a lot. Hahaha. "No, no, Braniac 5, we were being mentally controlled!" HAHAHAHA. Oh yeah, and Bee Boy applied for membership once. Streaky made him swim out to the pier with a candle in his thorax. Those were wild times.

THE ADVENTURES OF KRYPTO
In Superboy No.71 (March 1959), Krypto hijacks a telepathy device a switches bodies with his master, Superboy, becoming "Krypto, The Human Superdog", which sounds like a threat.

In possession of Superboy's body, Krypto reveals his true personality as being that of a total fucking jerk. He throws away Superboy's trophies, melts a Superboy robot into a Krypto robot, and pours like a whole bottle of Ma Kent's perfume on Superboy (in Krypto's body) so as to make him smell like a rural farm community cathouse.

Krypto, being an immense fuckup, can't help but act like a dog while in Superboy's body, so he saves a falling construction worker by catching him in his teeth, eats dog food in public, humps the dome on Smallville City Hall and murders every cat within a hundred mile radius.

In the end, Superboy reverses the mind-switch by "shocking" Krypto with the startling image of Superboy (in Krypto's body) flying off into space forever, which is weird because I'd think Krypto would be beyond shock by this point. The things this dog has seen, the things he has done ...

These were my fantastic adventures. There were so many folks I couldn't find the time or space to mention, or for that matter, the inclination. There was my pal Ed Lacy, a retired Police Detective who palled around with me when I was playing the role of a professional stuntdog named "Jocko." Most of Ed's relatives were junkies on the run from the law. We had to keep finding them and saving them. I'm guessing that this was because Ed was a black comic book character and, therefore, family of junkies. Comic book logic. It makes sense to some folk.

"This is a drawing I made of Proty. He is stinky poop."

And I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Ma and Pa Kent, my master's adoptive parents and the kindly couple whose rugs I so often ruined over the course of a lifetime. I will always remember MA Kent as the woman who would sneak me pieces of lunchmeat off the counter. I'll always remember Pa Kent as the man who would pass wind and blame it on me. Also, these two created my absolutely excellent secret identity of "Spot" or some damn thing, which they created by spilling paint on my back. They meant well. But honestly.

"Fuck you! Fuck you
and die you fucking
stupid cat! I hate you!"

THE END! ARF!

90 FROM THE 90s Part One!

The 1990s were a boom-period for comic books, but chances are – even if you were an avid reader – you could barely keep up with the multitude of new titles, new companies, important crossover events, dynamic character debuts, and startling cover enhancements the decade brought us. Why pore over literally tens of thousands of spittle-flecked pages of dusty ol’ comic books when Your Humble Editor can bring you up to speed in a few hundred words or less? Climb aboard as we dive into 90 from the ‘90s!

PART ONE

The Spider-Clone Saga

One of the most loathed and belittled multi-issue story arcs of the decade, the Spider-Clone Saga was routinely blasted for being confusing, drawn-out and muddled, but from a distance it’s clear as pie:

Back in the 70s, Spider-Man fought a villain named The Jackal. The Jackal was a genetics expert who cloned an exact duplicate of Spider-Man and had the two fight, and then the clone died, the end. Twenty years later, the Jackal returned, the clone showed up again, and it was implied that the clone was actually the real Peter Parker and the guy they’d been making the comic books about for the last two decades was actually the clone. Well of course he wasn’t, that would make Marvel look like jackasses, the end.

That’s the short version, the long version also includes a second clone/pretender to the Parker legacy named Kaine, another one named Spidercide (PS a thing that kills spiders is “arachnicide”, so why not use that as a name, folks?), a supernaturally powerful guy named Judas Traveller who didn’t actually do much of anything, a cloned Gwen Stacy, and the believed-dead Green Goblin was behind it all. If any of that made sense to you, you’re unfit for military service, sorry.

What made the Spider-Clone Saga such a nightmare was that it was literally being written month-to-month with long-term plans routinely thrown out the window as quickly as they were made. The reason: The other staples of 90s comics - bankruptcy and arbitrary changes among the editorial staff.

Spawn vs Batman / Batman vs Spawn

In the Nineties, you’d be hard-pressed to find too many characters more popular than Todd McFarlane’s Spawn and everyone-but-Bob-Kane’s Batman, so it was natural that they’d cross over.

Complicating matters was that the pair crossed over in two unrelated books released relatively simultaneously and crafted by separate creative teams. If you’ve ever been confused as to which book is
which, here’s a handy guide:

The first, published by DC Comics, was called Batman/Spawn:War Devil, was written by Doug Moench, ChuckDixon and Alan Grant (uh-oh, that’s a lot of cooks!) and drawn by Klaus Janson, and had the two title characters pursuing demonic creatures who’d last manifested amidst the 16th century Roanoke Colony. In this book, Spawn is a lost soul who gains some inspiration from Batman’s example.

By contrast, Spawn/Batman was written by Frank Miller, drawn byTodd McFarlane, involved hobos being turned into missiles (?) and was something like forty pages of this:

Punk!

Embossed metallic covers

Cover gimmicks were all the rage through the 1990s, and among the diecutting, glowing-in-the-dark and fluorescent inking on display, there started to come a point when the sheer number of alternate, variant and “enhanced” covers on display were so numerous that they accomplished the opposite of the intent – they effectively all blended together.

Nah, that looks great.

One of the most common cover gimmicks involved the combination of embossed and metallic covers, which proved to be a hand-in-hand natural with the 90s equal fascination involving characters wearing ridiculous armor. On the cover to Action Comics No.695, for instance, Superman forgets the principle rule of show business and stands with his back towards the audience – no worries, though, as the half that eats is reflected in the chest plate of a ginormous, embossed and foil-enhanced villain named Cauldron (Like I have to tell you who Cauldron is, why, after such a prominent debut, he became the most famous and beloved super-villain in the world and certainly not a throwaway generic 90s bad guy no one remembers). Likewise in Superman vol.2 No.82, the Cyborg Superman got an equally metallic treatment, and the shiny new Batman emerging from Knightfall got the treatment a couple of times as well.

Marvel broke out the silver and embossed cover gimmick on the 50th issue of Silver Surfer, which seemed a logical enhancement, while they also applied it to Silver Sable #1, which clearly they did to have embossed boobs on the comic.

The most egregious overuse of the gimmick, though, was a four-issue non-consecutive runs of Avengers (#360, #363, #366 and #369) featured single color, embossed, fully-figure metallic covers which gave its young fans the opportunity to experience what cataracts would be like in all the colors of the rainbow.

Belts and Pouches 

Let’s say you’re outfitting your shiny new character find of 1996 for their debut adventure against the snarling forces of sneering, noseless Creatine addicts from hell – the only enemy anyone in the 90s was allowed to fight. Now, if it’s a lady hero of the 90s, congrats, you’re done; once you’ve drawn her naked body, draw five or six lines at random intervals across it and she’s had a “costume” “designed”.

For the boys, though, you’re obligated to deck them out in mountains of gear in order to assert and affirm their limitless masculinity. Now, what says “as macho as a bull fucking a stallion in a hot dog stand?” Why, accessories of course! 

Thus the belt and pouch phase of the 1990s. Batman had long been comicdom’s coolest character, and his utility belt had long been part of the character’s charm. When Frank Miller added some heft and hew to the bat-belt in his inspirational mid-80s series The Dark Knight Returns (and also, at least in one scene, gave the caped crusader a portentous thigh-belt), it apparently resonated with the youngsters reading it then who would, years down the road, become comic book artists themselves.

So in an attempt to emulate the coolness of the original comic book cool guy, young artists succumbed, as do all false cool guys, to the wrong element of the cool – the clothes don’t make you cool, the attitude makes you cool, take it from me, Joe Writes-Fart-Jokes-About-Comics, the coolest guy around! So in addition to all the armor (totally cool, just like medieval knights), the shoulder- and knee-pads (exceptionally cool, just like hockey players), the headbands (unrelentingly cool, just like John Travolta in Staying Alive), belts and pouches got added to the mix. Hey, they’re cool too, or else middle aged women in the 1980s wouldn’t have owned so many of them (shout out to middle aged women, where my soccer moms at, thanks for reading my fart jokes about comics)!

What constitutes a valid placement for belts and pouches? Well, around the waist, or course, plus don’t forget to wrap a few around the character’s thighs and upper arms. Also, his lower arms and possibly his calves. You can throw a few around his chest, and don’t forget to attach several to his back – sure, the argument about the pouches was that they were very useful in combat situations, but putting them on the character’s back where he can’t reach them also makes sense. Since you’ve got these big shoulder-pads, put a few on there, and maybe some around the neck, plus don’t forget to utilize the space between the headband and collar – right over the face! Do it right and you can create an entire character out of belts and pouches, congratulations, you’ve ruled the Nineties. Now where to put these chains?

Hook Hand Aquaman

If you’re going to revamp any one character for the 1990s, you may as well make it Aquaman. Whatever the character actually had going for him, he’d ended up the repeated punchline thanks to his portrayal on Saturday morning cartoons – if you think a guy who rides around on flying fish, like, wearing a flying fish on each foot like a roller skate, and then flying that way something like two feet above the surface of the water, if you think that’s going to be improved by a hook for a hand then comic books aren’t for you.

Prior to the hook-handed years, Aquaman had been allowed a few sincere college tries. He’d briefly gotten a pretty sway new uniform until weird pedants jumped down the creative team’s throats (It was a “deep sea camouflage” outfit, and they pointed out that, you know, there’s no light in the deep sea so there’s no point to camoflage. I guess, I guess a deep sea camouflage outfit wouldn’t do much good on all the dudes hanging out in the bottom of the ocean like they do, all those dudes who are real and hanging out under the ocean, they wouldn’t need it). Another miniseries posited a political background to Aquaman’s origin (and created my favorite bit of character color – the much-maligned original uniform was declared to have been a prison uniform, which Aquaman wears as a reminder of his family’s banishment at the hands of pretenders to the throne). He was given some magic for a background, was made protector of the complicated chronicles of Atlantis, and given some political clout and a too-predictable environmental mission. Oh, then his hand got eaten off by pirahnas.

Over the course of three-quarters of a year, Aquaman abandoned his traditional look in favor of a sort of barbarian/Viking/Chippendale look, beginning with adding a brooding mane of long hair and leonine beard to his mix. Then a villain named Charybdis stole his ability to communicate with sea creatures (at which point the command “Piranhas, whatever you do, do NOT eat my hand” would have come in handy), Aquaman tied a harpoon to the stump, started dressing like a cross between a frog and a gladiator, and it all ends up with a cyborg hand and a complete reinvention but if you bought a commemorative Aquaman glass at Six Flags or the Warner Brothers Store then it had the old Aquaman on it, which we eventually returned to. Merchandising triumphs all!

TRULY GONE AND FORGOTTEN : NIGHTMARE AND SLEEPY

You can hardly throw a rock at a superhero comic of the Golden Age without hitting a dilettante millionaire whose boredom leads him to fight crime, but rarer by far is the homeless, hobo superhero. You don’t get a lot of crimeighters who rely on a utility bindle, or who stop while pursuing the bad guys so as to fish a cigar butt out of a rain grate.

Such a pair of do-gooder drifters, however, are Bob White - professional journeyman wrestler - and his teenage manager Terry Wake. When not grappling for the amusement of carnival crowds and assorted big city rubes in the squared circle, Bob and Terry are hitting the rails in search of their next big match. However, when in their meanderings they happen to come across crooks, criminals and weird happenstance, off come their togs and on go the uniforms of Nightmare and Sleepy, nocturnal terrors of the underworld!

"Also let's steal stuff."

Unlike most superheroes, Bob and Terry stumble into their costumed careers – while running away from danger. When the citizens of the town of tomorrow, Perfect City, are held for ransom by the checkers-playing, checkers-wearing, criminal archfiend The Checker (Off the top of my head, I can’t quite place his gimmick), Bob and Terry (who are only in town for a wrestling match) take off running for safety.

In fact, the duo split so suddenly that they must leave behind their street clothes, and catch a train while wearing only the macabre costumes they’d originally intended to wear to a celebratory masquerade following the wrestling match. They have those, right? A “Winner’s Ball” is what Terry calls it. It sounds like someone mashed up Smackdown and Eyes Wide Shut, to be frank about it.

Bob’s original costume was a macabre skeleton suit dabbed with phosphorescent paint which made the burly wrassler glow ominously in the dark, while Terry wore what appeared to be footie pajamas and a red hoodie. It’s worth mentioning here that Bob’s in-ring choice of wardrobe was a tuxedo – or so we’re told, it never actually pops up in the comic except to be mentioned – which is insane because the skeleton costume is already ten times better than that, though not better than TUXEDO SKELETON (I got a million good ideas, call me, Vince).

"I guess we may as well go home."

Although the pair had nothing going for them but four fists and a tireless appetite for slugging crooks, their enemies had a distinct supernatural feel (in sort of a Scooby Doo way, to be fair); The Checker was capable of making buildings vanish, there was a mirror-faced madman who portrayed a living corpse which stole men’s faces, and a confusing character called The Robber Baron who had died 300 years ago but was clearly a medieval figure. I’m no student of history, but I am a Young Earth Creationist, and 300 years ago was when dinosaurs happened! You can’t pull the wool over my eyes! (PS Wake up sheeple)

 Nightmare ditched the skeleton costume to take on a standard spandex superhero suit, complete with a big “N” on the chest, possibly to clarify which bat-eared superhero was currently beating up the crooks – lacking a cape, his costume was otherwise Batmanesque.

Even more unusually, though, the final appearance of Nightmare was not only sans Sleepy, it was in the company of a character named “Nosey McGuiness”, a cheapskate would-be private eye whose homemade cigars summoned a genie-like Nightmare to appear. Now endowed with magic powers, Nightmare poofed out of existence when Nosey’s cigars were extinguished, the whole batch of which must’ve been stamped out because neither Nightmare not Sleepy – whatever verison - ern’t been seen since…

THE ELONGATED MAN'S GROSSEST STRETCHES

I’d always been a fan of the stretching superhero, and how could you not – it’s such a goony super-power in the abstract, and so perfectly suited to comics, what with its cartoonish exaggeration of form and elastic violations of physics. Just perfect for the medium and genre!

As an adult, I kept a fondness for them, because the stretchable heroes also seemed to be the more stylistically distinct characters – Bob Haney’s imaginative ensemble stories for Metamorpho, likably illustrated by Ramona Fradon, or Jack Cole’s dynamic and pan-to-the-face absurd Plastic Man, or even the subsequent followups to Plastic Man by Pasko and Staton, and Kyle Baker. As superheroes go, stretching heroes seem to have a little more liberty to act up, be odd and engage themselves in the genuinely unusual.

Even Ralph Dibny, the Elongated Man, who ranks in general stodginess a little below Mister Fantastic and in forced humor a little above Jimmy Olsen – the obvious allusion to The Thin Man in his character was appealing enough, but the built-in partnership with his wife Sue made the character pretty charming. Charm – that’s what he had going for him.

So imagine my dismay when I read the downright Cronenbergian body horror which The Elongated Man exercises in this backup story from Detective Comics #380, “Fortune in a Flower Pot”.

Oh, that is ... that's too much, there, man, that's overdoing it.

The Elongated Man’s backup stories were typically the realm of Gardner Fox and Murphy Anderson, and were daffy little mysteries dotted with clues which Encyclopedia Brown could shake out in a heartbeart.  The last few backups, however, were illustrated by Sid Greene, who managed to render Ralph in truly toxic distortions of his body.

The Elongated Man’s stretching power is limited precisely to that – stretching (a weird stint in Justice League Europe notwithstanding). This usually manifested itself in drawn-out limbs or torso, possibly the neck, and at least once an issue in the “mystery-sniffing nose” wherein Ralph’s nose would do gross paroxysms because he’s a dick – although I had never before seen it go as wild as it does in the above image, windmilling like a plane’s propeller in front of his face. Imagine the sound that must be making.

But it gets worse…

The little motion lines around his butt don't help.

I guess when his hands and feet are occupied, Ralph has no choice but to elongate his … elbows and knees … and use them as bludgeons. Merely glancing at this panel gives me uncomfortable sensations along all my joints.

Luckily, for the majority of the rest of the story, Ralph keeps the elongating to his limbs and neck as he solves the case of why two guys are putting gold coins in a flower pot – the answer (turn away now if you don’t want to know!) is that these two fellas are looking for a handful of buried coins on this plot of land, and rather than digging up the whole shmear they’re getting a chemical analysis of soil which is covering gold. Apparently they’ve got a machine that lets them detect places where soil has touched gold, providing they get this data, and I can think of a better use for such a machine right off the bat but they didn’t ask me.

Ralph ends up trailing a lead on some possible crooks to a coin dealer’s establishment, where gun-toting baddies shove him up against a wall. Ralph responds the only way possible, by putting his eyes on horrifying stalks, beating people with his hair and … shoulder … shoulder blades … sh ….

So gross.

As a palate cleanser, though, here’s the letters page for this issue wherein Harlan Ellison basically proposes shooting Mark Evanier into the ocean to die:

BATMAN LEADS AN INTERESTING LIFE - BAT-BABY

Yeah well, Batman's been supported by advertising for decades now.

Batman vol.1 No.147 (May 1962)

There’s nothing in the otherwise carefree, happy-go-lucky, twenty-four hour rave scene of the Batcave that brings down the party atmosphere quite like its collection of teen-sized playclothes left to hang miserably in bare glass cases. Worst of them all – and, I mean, what, at this point there’s like a half-dozen Kevlar playsuits formerly attached to hyperactive adolescents with hard-ons for justice all stuck in there, plus Tim Drake’s dad’s bloodsoaked “Big Dog” shirt, right? – is probably, however, the tiny black shoes and pitch black romper in the case marked enigmatically “Bat Baby”. OH GOD HE HAD A BABY SIDEKICK? DID THE JOKER MURDER HIM?

Oh god, that is so cute.

Well, no, Bat-Baby was the star of the story with the giveaway title “Batman Becomes Bat-Baby”, which I choose to read in the same tone as “Mourning Becomes Elektra.” When the Caped Crusader stumbles in the path of an eerie green ray machine set up by the renegade scientist “Garth” (Party on, renegade scientist), he finds himself reduced in stature, bulk and maturity – yes, he’s reduced to baby size!

When the news breaks, the Dark Knight Diaper Despoiler is struck with the sudden reality that his crimefighting days might be over. Damn straight they are, who wants to read a comic about a baby fighting wave after wave of gun-toting crooks, except me and everyone else in the world?

Donning a – dammit, I’ll say it – utterly adorable set of playclothes, complete with tiny cowl and cape, Batman rebrands himself as Bat-Baby. Encouragingly, the Short-Pants Paladin (y’gotta rebrand all the way up, folks) has retained his full adult strength and, arguably, his full adult intelligence, although he did embark on this “crimefighting baby” plan so I’m not convinced.

It turns out the Bat-Baby is exceptionally gifted as a costumed crimefighter, so much so that he’s able to pursue, apprehend and wring a cure from the crooks who pint-sized in the first place. Even maintaining his secret identity turns out to be a cinch, since the only person they have to flummox is Kathy Kane and I think the Batman comics have done a pretty good job of establishing that girls are dumb and too emotional to make for good crimefighters. They scare Kathy off with cardboard silhouettes, one of which she fears has stolen Bruce Wayne’s heart. Goddamnit Kathy.

Disappointingly, Bat-Baby doesn’t follow the Batwoman/Man-Of-Bats/International Batmen model of having crimefighting equipment which is specific to his non-standard white maleness, so while he does use roller skates and ride a hobby horse down some stairs at criminals, it’s not like he has a bag of bat-marbles, a bat-slingshot or like a bat-beanie propeller because that would also have been amazing.

"Put it next to that dead Robin's outfit."

TRULY GONE AND FORGOTTEN : THE CHAMPIONS

For the sake of accuracy, the Champions don’t completely fit in here, because they’re not forgotten – the individual members of this unusual teaming of five at-the-time unaffiliated Marvel Comics C-Listers, for one thing – and this is incredibly unusual in the modern landscape of superhero comics – are all still alive. More than that, they’re remembered – just about any long-time comic fan with more than, say, five years under the belt of even a light diet of titles from Marvel may have at least heard reference to the short-lived assemblage.

You can't establish your authority in L.A. until you run over a black guy.

They are, however, gone, inasmuch as the U.S.Patent and Trademark Office long ago ruled that Marvel had sufficiently neglected the title long enough that its use as a comic book title is pretty much the exclusive property of Heroic Publishing, the folks who produce The Champions role-playing game.

“Neglect”, however, is a pretty good way to approach the Champions, since they seem to have been a team assembled on various whims and published by chance. Originally, the book’s creator – Tony Isabella – had planned to make it a threesome consisting of the newly-liberated Iceman and Angel, teamed with Isabella’s Black Goliath character. Goliath was yanked off the table when he got his own short-lived book, Hercules and the Black Widow were yoinked from The Avengers and Daredevil, and editor Len Wein demanded a  fifth member so a cavalcade of lesser-knowns were lined up, including Captain Marvel, Luke Cage and Son of Satan, before Ghost Rider – the only superhero based on a biker tattoo - was decided upon.

Also there were giant robot nazi bees.

Even though the Champions end up light on diversity in the traditional sense, you nonetheless end up with one weird superheroic sewing circle – a Greek God, a former Soviet spy, two mutants and a demon biker from Hell.  Black Goliath even managed to hang out with the team for a while, as did would-be Sovet defector Darkstar, which as far as I’m concerned makes them both team members. Same goes for Godzilla, whom the team ineffectually battled while the King of Monsters was licensed by the House of Ideas. Unfortunately they never met The Shogun Warriors, The Micronauts or Werewolf By Night. The Champions’ rogues gallery is small but hilarious, including “Rampage” (a.k.a. The Recession Raider), sort of a dollar-devalued Iron Man, and SWARM, the Man Made Of Nazi Bees Who Would Shoot Nazi Bees At You From His Bee Arm. I had the action figure.

Meanwhile, the Champs found themselves facing every class of villain from evil Greek God Pluto to galactic powerhouse The Stranger (whose power is that it feels like someone else is doing it to you), members of the Soviet Super Soldiers, MODOK, Magneto, Dr.Doom and, of course, Stilt-Man.

The team didn’t make it past seventeen issues, all published amidst scheduling flubs and packaging errors which kept the Champs from ever achieving their full potential – they didn’t even get an entry in either of the first two Official Handbooks of the Marvel Universe, which is why I made one for them.