Oh Man

I just found out that Fatburger filed for bankruptcy in April. That sucks. I didn't eat at Fatburger regularly when I lived in L.A. I saved it for a special treat. For instance, I went to Fatburger to console myself the day Digger died. There's nothing like a King Egg Chiliburger to lift your spirits.

I hope they work things out. Someday (when I'm employed again), I might head back to L.A. and I'd like to have a Fatburger while I'm there.

Big Audio Wednesday - The Benny That Started It All

The first time I really posted about old radio, more than 2 years ago, I mentioned an old Jack Benny episode that I'd heard on local radio. Frank Sinatra was the guest, still early in his career, his Vegas years with the Rat Pack still ahead of him, so all the jokes about him were either about his sex symbol status or about how he was so skinny.

So I was searching around for something cool to post, and found some stuff with Frank Sinatra, but figured I'd post this first. So click the widget and enjoy this episode of Jack Benny. It's good on its own, but it also serves as a good teaser for next week's Sinatra two-for-one.

One Giant Leap

Forty years ago today, the Eagle landed. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first two men to walk on the moon.

It's hard to remember now how big that day was. I remember the entire family gathered around the television, me lying on the floor in front of the set, watching a fuzzy, ghosted image of Neil Armstrong climbing down the leg of the LEM (Lunar Excursion Module, for you kids who don't remember) and giving his famous "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" quote, his voice clipped by the radio transmitter. Among her many family snapshots, my mother has a photo of the TV showing Armstrong descending, with the words "Live from the moon" emblazoned across the bottom of the screen.

Aldrin descended soon after. The impression I carry, all these years later, is that he seemed reluctant to step away from the leg of the LEM. He kept starting to step away, then grabbing hold again, like a kid in the deep end of the pool who's afraid to let go of the edge.

Which is not to slight Aldrin's bravery. All of the Apollo astronauts exhibited incredible courage just in climbing into the capsule to take the voyage. The entire thing was so dangerous, so beyond anything that men had attempted before, and yet, they made it look easy. Hell, the way Armstrong and Aldrin bounced around on the moon's dusty surface, they made it look fun.

All the sadder, then, that since the end of the Apollo program, we've never been back, let alone moved beyond. I understand that there are other, more practical, more humane things to spend the money on. Believe, being unemployed at the moment, I'm hyperaware of spending priorities and the need to address basics before luxuries.

If you've ever gone back to visit your former elementary school as an adult, I'm sure you've had the experience of feeling that everything seemed smaller on your return. That's the way it feels now to look back at the moon landing. Everything was bigger then.

Everything seems smaller now.

Footage of the landing can be found on YouTube.

ETA: I've always wondered what it was like to be Mike Collins, the third man on the Apollo 11 mission. He stayed in the Command Module, orbiting the moon while Armstrong and Aldrin went down to the surface. Imagine the incredible mix of pride and disappointment at being selected for the first manned landing on the moon, then being told you have to be the one to wait in the car, idling by the curb, while the other guys go party. Imagine the loneliness of being that designated driver.

Out of the Vault - Badger #29

One of my favorite comics of the 80's was Badger, a hilariously convoluted story of martial arts and magic that grew out of the simplest of taglines. As near as I can remember from an interview I read years ago, Mike Baron had been asked to come up with another comic to follow up his science fiction saga Nexus, but the publishers wanted a super-hero this time. So Baron thought about the idea, and his thought was this: "Put on a costume and fight crime? You'd have to be crazy."

And so Badger was born. Vietnam veteran Norbert Sykes has multiple personalities, including little girl Emily and suave murderer Pierre, but his fallback personality is the Badger, a martial artist who talks to animals and very occasionally fights crime. Badger lives with Ham, an ancient druid sorcerer who uses his magic to make a killing in the markets, and Daisy, Ham's secretary (she was also Norbert's caseworker until he was released from the mental hospital).

Issue 29, published in 1987, was a one-shot filler issue, a story completely out of continuity by Baron and guest artist Eric Shanower. In the story, titled "The Magic Word," Clonezone (an alien stand-up comedian featured in Nexus) is on stage, doing a bit about lawyers, when a heckler interrupts with "Whaddayou?! A lawyer?!"

Clonezone banters with the heckler, a huge cone-headed bruiser who keeps repeating his lawyer question, adding a little bit each time until he leaps at the stage in frustration. Clonezone then summons Badger from backstage to deal with the heckler. They fight, until Daisy bursts into Badger's room at the mansion in Wisconsin to tell him to knock off the noise. Seems Badger was dreaming or something.

So Daisy and Badger jump in Badger's car and drive to a local bar to get a drink. On the way, Daisy tells Badger of Ham's "Project Eight-Ball," a scheme to mess with space and time, so Ham can "resurrect dead movie stars and have them remake their greatest classics in color." They go into a bar called the Space Port, where Daisy notices that several of the people look awfully strange, and the view out the window is ships in space rather than Badger's car in the street.

But the oddity is forgotten when Badger's buddy Warren Oates (who died in 1982--Badger speaks to ghosts fairly often) calls them over to his booth. They are joined by Ham and W.C. Fields, who invite them to a game of pool (eight ball, natch). Turns out, it was Bill Fields who came up with the idea for "Project Eight-Ball."

So Warren and Bill play pool, until Warren says the wrong thing (notice also in the panel on the left that two of the spectators for the pool game are Space Ghost and Lion-O of the Thundercats):


The bruiser appears, chanting his mantra. Badger knocks him through a window into space and leaps out after him. He does not suffocate, but merely floats around making jokes until Clonezone grabs him and flies him to a nearby space service station, where they encounter Grimjack (star of another First Comics series). Badger and Clonezone narrowly survive a firefight between Grimjack and unnamed enemies, and all seems fine until Clonezone mentions lawyers. The bruiser appears again, this time in space armor.

Badger and Zone flee into the men's room and appear in the bar, where Bill Fields owes Warren Oates $2000. Badger begs Bill to rack and break, because earlier, the estimable Mr. Fields said that the break in pool was comparable to changing space and time. Badger hounds Fields until he mentions lawyers, at which time the bruiser enters again. Fields flees, but Clonezone grabs the cue to break. The cue ball leaps off the table and hits Badger in the forehead.

He wakes up in his room, where he figures out "it was all a ham-handed homage to Winsor McKay (sic)." Then Warren Oates and Bill Fields walk in. Fields suggests Badger sue Clonezone. "Of course, he lives in another dimension entirely. You'll need a good lawyer." Badger=facepalm.

The End.

At the time it came out, I wasn't thrilled with the story. It was fun, but entirely too random. Baron often walked a fine line between drama and silliness, and this issue of Badger was too far over the line for me. But over twenty years later, I still find myself occasionally saying, "Whaddayou?! A lawyer?!" and then being unable to explain why I think it's funny. So it was memorable, at least.

The next issue went back to regular continuity, in which Badger and his buddy Riley encountered an evil martial artist named Ron Dorgan, who killed a rival master and hit Badger with a delayed death touch. Badger and Riley must assault the island stronghold of Hop Ling Sung, Dorgan's master, to have the death touch removed.

To that purpose, Ham imbues them with the spirits of two ancient and powerful Celtic warriors, which they can unleash when in need by speaking a magic phrase. Once they reach the island, they are besieged by a large force of fighters, but Badger doesn't speak the phrase to unleash the magic warriors. Riley accuses him of having forgotten the magic word. Badger's reply?


Sadly, it doesn't work.

In the end, Badger and Riley defeat both Dorgan and Sung, resulting in Badger being invited to a mystic martial arts tournament which took place in the graphic novel "Hexbreaker."

Big Audio Wednesday - Theater Five

According to the notes on its Internet Archive page, Theater Five was an attempt by ABC in the 60's to revive radio drama. CBS would make another attempt in the late 70's with CBS Radio Mystery Theater.

Theater Five episodes open with a snippet of dialogue from the show, setting up a moment of tension, followed by the jazzy theme song. The theme song sounds like something from a TV show of the time, bombastic horns over bongos with an announcer giving the episode title as in a Quinn Martin show. "Tonight's episode: Incident at Apogee."

"Incident at Apogee," broadcast in 1964, isn't actually science fiction. It's a domestic drama that takes place during man's first walk in space (which occurred in real life on June 3, 1965 during the Gemini 4 mission). So it's more "ripped from the headlines" than speculative. But the actual sci-fi episodes of Theater Five were pretty awful, cliched stuff, so this episode stands out in that respect.

It was written by William N. Robson, an old veteran who in previous decades had worked on Escape, one of the best dramas on radio. In the early 60's, Robson had been making documentaries for Voice of America.

The early episodes of the series (of which this is one) feature fairly strong stories. Later episodes were weaker (not surprising when you consider how many scripts the show burned through at 5 days a week), and the series was dropped in less than a year after 260 episodes.

So take a deep breath, click the widget and enjoy "Incident at Apogee." There's no air in space, you know.

Out of the Vault - Prez #4

Yes, it is just a coincidence that Prez in the Vault Archives comes just after Power Plays. Okay, no it's not. I'd been meaning to do it sometime and it was right there, so now seems as good a time as ever.

So here's the deal: in the early 70's, DC, with much fanfare, hired Jack Kirby away from Marvel Comics. DC wanted to update their image and cut into Marvel's market share. At roughly the same time, DC began to make more extensive use of their archives, trying to lure readers with the extra value of pages and pages of Golden Age reprints as back-up features. In the Kirby books, of course, the reprints were of Golden Age stories by Jack Kirby with his then-partner, Joe Simon.

I don't know if that was what provided the spur, but at some point, DC then decided to hire Joe Simon as well. I'm not sure what made the suits at DC think that two old Depression-Era geezers like Simon and Kirby could attract the hip youth market, but they gave it a try, and in the process created some truly demented comics. Kirby came out with his New Gods series, followed by The Demon, OMAC (One Man Army Corps), and Kamandi, The Last Boy on Earth.

Simon created such trivia classics as Brother Power, the Geek and Green Team:Boy Millionaires. And in between, he gave us America's first teen president in Prez.

Prez detailed the story of Prez Rickard, a teenager who is elected to office by the massive new constituency created by the amendment allowing 18-year-olds to vote (in Prez-world, another law was passed allowing teenagers to hold all public offices as well). You can tell he's the Prez because he wears a red sweater with his own personalized Presidential seal on it (as seen on the cover above). Hmm, an American president with his own personalized seal? I thought this was supposed to be a fantasy.

Anyway, I only have issue #4, but it should give you an idea of the truly demented flavor of what Simon and DC were doing at the time. I'm going to describe the plot in some detail, because there is so much compressed into these few pages that it's an injustice to summarize.

Issue 4 opens with a man entering the hidden White House vaults and locating a secret file, where we're told "Here, for the first time, you will read all the incredible facts exactly as they happened!" Because that kind of opening worked so well for Ed Wood.

Next, we're swept away to the Republic of Moravia, where Prez and his FBI chief/sidekick Eagle Free are on hand for the opening of a new canal (built with U.S. financial aid) that will bring water to Moravia so they may irrigate their crops and bathe. That second bit is important, because it is the custom in Moravia that everyone wear garlic around their necks.

So Prez and Eagle Free jump on Air Force One--sorry, Prez's jet has been renamed the FreeBee--to fly home. As they're leaving, they notice a dark cloud just on the border of Moravia, and Prez notes that "it may be some country we haven't even heard of!"

Upon returning to the White House, Prez is summoned to the Groovy Room (really) to help negotiate with the Chinese ambassador. There, he finds Vice President Martha, a rather stout woman, playing a furious game of Ping Pong (sorry, table tennis) with the Chinese ambassador, because it's the only way they can communicate. The State Department has sent the wrong interpreters; a pair of silent black women in robes stand by the table, notebooks in hand, ready to interpret any Nigerian that happens to be spoken in the meeting. Hmm, an incompetent State Department screwing up translations? I thought this was supposed to be a fantasy.

Prez takes control, seizing the paddle from Martha as Eagle Free takes over interpreting duties through Indian sign language (seriously). The Chinese are upset over American relations with Moravia, but Prez assures them there is no problem.


If you check out the wallpaper in the scene above, you'll see why it's called the Groovy Room. Limitations in printing technology of the time didn't allow them to show the blacklights. The scene where Prez then gives the Chinese ambassador some DVD's and an iPod has been deleted from my issue for some reason.

That night, a bat-shaped helicopter flies in and lands on the White House roof unannounced. Nervous soldiers surround the aircraft as the passenger climbs out. It's a Wolfman! There's a fight that "wages though the early hours" until dawn, at which time the Wolfman transforms into a human, who claims that he has come for a summit meeting. He is the ambassador from Transylvania, you see. Well, sure.

Prez does not say, "what, they don't have phones in your country?" Instead he just asks where Transylvania is. He's told that it borders Moravia, and Eagle Free deduces that it must be under the black cloud. Ambassador Wolfman (whose briefcase is shaped like a small coffin) demands that the Moravian canal be destroyed, because it has diverted water away from Transylvania, which is now dying of thirst. "No way!" sez Prez, so Wolfman declares a state of war, by authority of Count Dracula the First, ruler of Transylvania.

Chapter 2 (lots of DC Comics broke their stories into chapters, for some reason) opens in a situation room, where Prez informs the gathered "gentlemen--and you chicks--it seems we are at war with a country we can't find." Apparently, the cloud cover is so thick in Transylvania that their spies can't see anything. The only thing they know is that legend has it Transylvania is a country of vampires.

That night, the mysterious coffin-shaped briefcase that Ambassador Wolfman left in the Oval Office (and which has sat undiscovered and undisturbed all day right next to Prez's desk) opens to reveal a legless vampire tied to a small wheeled cart like Eddie Murphy in "Trading Places." The vampire squeaks his way through a deserted White House to Prez's room, where he's just about to put the bite on Prez and make him a vampire, when Eagle Free bursts into the room in the nick of time, having just remembered the briefcase.

Eagle and Prez square off against the vampire, who claims he is indestructible. He has been tormented and crippled and staked seven times, and still he keeps coming back. He then attacks Prez with his incredible strength, but Eagle Free drives him off with a swastika--sorry, an "Indian Hooked Cross"--so the vamp wheels his way out of the White House and onto the lawn, where he bowls over about twenty Marines and jumps onto the bat-chopper for a quick getaway.

The Moravian ambassador next informs Prez that Transylvania is planning a sneak attack: the single airplane in the Transylvanian Air Force will air-drop a cargo of rabid bats over Washington D.C. Prez goes before Congress to ask for emergency war powers to deal with the situation, but they just ask "What have you kids been smoking" and start a Congressional investigation into the White House. Hmmm, Congress wasting time in frivolous attacks on the President in wartime? I thought this was supposed to be a fantasy.

Anyway, with no authorization from Congress, the only option appears to be Eagle Free's marvelous nature powers. You see, aside from being head of the FBI, Eagle Free is like a shaman or something. He wears a headband with a feather, lives in a teepee on the banks of the Potomac and communes with the animals. But don't call him a stereotype or anything. He hates that. Anyway, Eagle Free decides to send his bird friends in a kamikaze attack on the Transylvanian jet.

Prez accompanies Eagle Free to his teepee to see the birds off. As they paddle in Eagle Free's canoe, Prez comments, "The Secret Servicemen must be frantic," which is funny, because there's been no sign of a Secret Service agent anywhere in the book. They must be invisible or something. It's a comic book, it could happen.

So anyway, after a tearful goodbye, the birds are sent winging off toward the Transylvanian plane, which is also shaped like a bat (purchased from Wayne Enterprises, perhaps? Hmmm?) The birds swarm into the jet intake and shut down the engines. The plane, flown by Ambassador Wolfman and the legless vampire (could they not find someone else in Transylvania to fly the plane?), crashes into the Atlantic. All is well, except for the Congressional investigation, of course.

And then there's the matter of foreign aid. According to Eagle Free, America always helps rebuild the countries it defeats. So should they now use American dollars to rebuild the land of the living dead? That is, if they can find it?

I could tell them, don't bother. There were only two people in Transylvania anyway, and they were both on the plane.

Tha Cube

So like I said, I've been watching a lot of Hulu lately (halfway thru season 1 of Angel now). And one of the commercials they're playing a lot of lately is for the Nissan Cube.

And like I guess every car commercial nowadays, the Cube commercial includes the disclaimer "Professional driver on closed road. Do not attempt."

You see this all the time on commercials where the car is zooming along a winding road, cornering at high speed, or tearing across a desert kicking up huge plumes of sand in its wake. It makes sense there.

But in the Cube commercial (you can see the long version of the commercial on the Cube's website here), not only does the car not do anything even remotely dangerous, but the car is never actually driven on screen, as far as I can tell.

A guy gets into a Cube, then we see a miniature Cube being pulled along a moving road at a sedate speed. Not only is it not a real car, but the wheels never even turn. The only times we see the real car are when people are shown getting in and out (and I find the brunette in the white tremendously appealing in a low-key, distracted way), and it's parked then.

So do they include the disclaimer as a joke, or is our society now so hyper-litigious that we have to include disclaimers warning people not to emulate behavior exhibited by a model car that never actually even moves?

Big Audio Wednesday - Chick Carter, Boy Detective

I was hoping to track down some episodes of Blackhawk, but couldn't find any. So instead enjoy a quick episode of Chick Carter, Boy Detective.

When I was a kid, my mom had a record called "Themes Like Old Times," which featured the opening minute or so of about 60 old radio shows. Some of them were generic, but some were very distinctive, like the creaking door of Inner Sanctum or the dramatic narration followed by a snippet of "Night on Bald Mountain" that opens Escape.

One of the other most distinctive openings was Chick Carter, Boy Detective.

Chick Carter was a show about the adopted son of fictional detective Nick Carter, featured in pulp magazines and on his own radio show, Nick Carter, Master Detective. It was a kid's show, but it was no Encyclopedia Brown. In the episode posted below, Chick works with the police to solve a murder. This episode is nothing special, part of an ongoing storyline. I include it mainly because of the nostalgia of the opening.

The opening features a ham radio-sounding broadcast from callsign Mutual to callsign Y-O-U, immediately making the audience part of the story.

Click the widget to listen.

Random Buffy Observations

I've just finished watching the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Hulu. I don't have a lot to say about that hasn't been said before and better by folks on a thousand different sites, I'm sure, but a few observations.

It's always fun to do that double-take that comes with seeing someone who was an anonymous bit player then, but who turned into a significant player on a subsequent show. The invisible girl in the first season ep "Out of Mind, Out of Sight" later became the FBI agent in pursuit of Sylar in the first season of Heroes. Late in the second season, an episode about Xander joining the swim team featured Wentworth Miller, later to star in Prison Break. In the pilot episode of Buffy spin-off Angel, one of the vamps who gets dusted pre-credits is played by Josh Holloway, now better known as Sawyer on Lost.

The third season credits rock. The theme song benefits greatly from the cutting of the scream and the addition of the gong at the end (okay, I'm pretty sure it's actually a tolling bell, but I just love to say "gong"). One weird thing I noticed; in the first ep of the second season, they added a silly whoosh sound effect to the shot of Buffy firing the crossbow. Then in the next episode and all subsequent episodes, the sound effect is gone.

But apparently someone on the show was determined to work in at least one sound effect in the credits, because in the third season, there was another, less silly whoosh in the shot of Giles swinging a torch. No other sound effects tied to any of the other action, just one torch whoosh. But somebody had to go to the effort of mixing that in there. Weird.

I know that it's been a long tradition in fiction to make characters smarter or stupider depending on the needs of the plot. I remember reading a comment one time about the Justice League, that they had in their ranks two scientists (Atom and Flash) and three aliens from worlds with super-advanced technology (Superman, Martian Manhunter, Hawkman), yet when they all got together, they would all turn to Batman and say, "What's the plan?"

But on Buffy, the characters veer to even more ridiculous extremes. Xander is the classic nebbish, cowardly and klutzy, until a vampire attacks, and then suddenly he turns into Batman, beating up vamps left and right. Similarly, Giles is all thumbs whenever he tries to train Buffy in combat. But when Giles is alone, suddenly his old Ripper instincts leap out and he's beating folks up left and right. And when Wesley comes into the picture, Giles suddenly becomes Errol Flynn, able to outfence Wesley while reading the paper in his other hand.

The show really suffered when it lost both Cordelia and Oz. They were characters who provided necessary counterpoints to the main cast. Oz was never adequately replaced, and Anya was a poor substitute for Cordelia.

Moving on to the first season of Angel now.

Out of the Vault- Power Plays

First off, let me just say, Happy Independence Day!

And second off, okay, fine, since I did Power Factor last week, let's stick with the "Power" theme and take a look at another independent publication, this time from 1983: Power Plays.

The rise of direct market distribution for comics in the late 70's and early 80's (rather than newsstand distribution) encouraged smaller publishers and even self-publishers to take a chance in the marketplace. They were further encouraged by the success of Dave Sims's Cerebus the Aardvark and the Pinis' Elfquest. In the early to mid 80's, the market was flooded with cheap black-and-white books all trying to be the next Cerebus or Elfquest,at least until 1984, when the market was flooded with even more cheap black-and-whites trying to be the next Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

And in 1983, one of those contenders was a fairly entertaining little self-pubbed book titled Power Plays, written and ilustrated by Mike Kelly. I don't know if Kelly ever did anything else; I can't find any other info on him.

While it was locked in the Vault for lo, these many years, I would occasionally remember it. The character's dialogue from the cover of the first issue was indelibly imprinted on my brain: "My dearest, dear friends! May I present: Power Plays"

I couldn't remember much about it, except that it was some kind of black-and-white superhero parody, something about a rich superpowered girl surrounded by a menagerie of losers, with an X-Men vs. Galactus parody in there also, which was a wicked send-up of Claremont's writing at the time.

So I pulled Power Plays out of the Vault and read it. The rich girl + misfits plot I had fairly down. The X-Men vs. Galactus thing, not so much. I was apparently confusing it with another black-and-white hero parody. That one's still in the Vault somewhere, and I have no idea what it's called.

Power Plays takes place in a world where superpowers have suddenly and mysteriously cropped up in a wide cross-section of people. A scientist named Thomas Appleton wants to study the origin of the powers and help people deal with them. He has gathered a group of super individuals around him as assistants/test subjects, along with a non-powered individual who wears a dog mask and calls himself Barker the Beagleman.

Barker's the real star of the book. Seriously. His only powers seem to be cynicism and a bad back. But he succeeds using wits where brawn fails, as in this scene where he defeats a super-villain using a can of quick-hardening plastic foam.

Barker and Appleton meet with incredibly rich and even more incredibly super heiress Kristel Montclaire at her penthouse, where she agrees to sponsor his research, as long as he and his people come to live with her. She likes to surround herself with special people like herself, you see.

In the meantime, an assassin with a super version of the Dim Mak Death Touch (he even looks a little like Count Dante) has been hired by a mysterious someone to kill Montclaire. He chooses to do the deed at the lavish coming-out party she hosts for her new housemates (where she repeats the "My dearest, dear friends" formulation, the one that stuck in my brain for twenty-five years when the rest of the book had faded).

The book turned out better than many independent efforts. It had charm and appeal in both the art and writing, although both needed developing. The book is pretty dialogue-heavy, especially on the exposition pages, and the artwork is bogged down with tiny figures and frenetic, confusing layouts trying to cram too much action into too few pages.

It apparently didn't sell too well, because the second issue, hyped on the inside back cover, didn't come out until two years later, from a different publisher (AmeriComics, who also reprinted issue one). Five years later, according to this page, a third issue was again self-published by the author. Then in 1995, twelve years after the first issue was published, four issues were published by Millenium Publications (whether they were new material or not, I can't say--I only have the first issue from 1983 and the second issue from 1985).

Speaking of the second issue, you know what never gets old? X-Men parodies. /sarc

Big Audio Wednesday - Too Many Blue Beetles

Just one episode today, or perhaps I should say two. Like the previous Blue Beetle episodes I've posted, there are two episodes in one file.

Like the 60's Batman TV show, Blue Beetle was broadcast twice a week, with one storyline spanning both episodes.

In this week's story, the Blue Beetle battles a new syndicate that has a sinister plan to discredit him by hiring thugs to commit crimes while wearing copies of his costume. So that plot was probably getting old by 1940, when this show was first broadcast. Audio quality is pretty poor on this one, and there are no technological breakthroughs like the previous episode I posted in which Dr. Franz sends the Blue Beetle extra "vitality" via cell phone (or as a gamer friend likes to say, "let me text you some hit points"), but the savage ending makes up for it, I think. Take my word for it, you don't want to impersonate the Blue Beetle.

Click the widget to listen and enjoy.

Out of the Vault - Power Factor #1

The late 80's and early 90's were littered with independent comics publishers that sprung up almost literally overnight, published one or two issues of a book or two, then disappeared without a trace. And it sometimes seems as if half of them were edited by David Campiti (who now runs a company called Glass House Graphics, which boasts a certain Jinky Coronado among its creators--according to Wikipedia, Campiti can also boast a certain Jinky Coronado as his wife).

One such company was Wonder Color Comics, which lasted long enough to publish single issues of three titles, before shutting its doors. One of those titles was Power Factor #1, published in 1987, written by Kevin Juaire and drawn by Tom Lyle and Doug Hazlewood.

The cover features the central problem with Power Factor in a nutshell. There are four characters on the cover: a costumed archer holding the body of another costumed hero on the left, and two shadowy figures in some sort of blue dimensional rift on the right.

None of those characters appear in the story. Some of their costumes appear on mannequins, however.

That doesn't make any sense, I know. Let's try it this way: Power Factor is the story of...

No, that doesn't really work, either. Let's try it this way:

The story opens in 1965 with a meeting between crime bosses. The main Boss (who is not named in the scene) explains to the representatives of the other syndicates that costumed superheroes are no cause for panic. He displays a mannequin wearing a bullet-riddled costume and says that any hero who wears a costume will soon be dead.

He then gives his son Michael a squirt gun. Michael recoils, saying "That's a bad guy's gun. I wanted to be a cop." I have no idea how you can tell a bad squirt gun from a good squirt gun, but roll with it.

We then see a flying superhero confront a couple of street thugs. Bullets bounce off him, and the toughs turn to run. But then a homeless guy pulls out a huge freaking blaster and blows a hole in the hero. The Boss (or maybe a boss, the art is unclear) steps out and tells his underlings to collect the costume.

In the Boss's office, a few years later, we see he has a gallery of mannequins in costumes representing all the heroes he has killed. While he's gone, however, his son Michael, who still has no idea what his dad does for a living, sneaks into the office and tries one of the costumes on. The Boss comes back and tells Michael that he should hold no reverence for costumes, because the "heroes" who wear them are the enemies of his Family.

Ten years later, Michael has joined the family business. The Boss's right hand man, Julius, tells him, "There's no secret whose son you are, Michael." Then in the next panel, Julius takes a phone call and announces, "Larson Grant is dead."

Who?

Apparently, Larson Grant was the name of the Boss (so it sort of was a secret whose son Michael was, at least to the readers). So now Michael is the new head of the syndicate.

Seven years later, it's 1987, and two men are meeting in a small kitchen. Sam Drake has superpowers and has been on the run for twenty years. Josh Kennedy, an old black ex-coach who walks with a cane, asks Sam how many times he's tried to kill himself.

The two men then confront a third man, identified only as Ferret. Ferret was a costumed hero who was "convinced" to retire by the mob. Sam and Josh tell Ferret they have a plan to revive the costumes, but Ferret flees. When Sam tracks him down, Ferret says he was ordered to retire or lose his wife and child. No way will he ever wear the Ferret costume again.

So Sam says "Be somebody else," and dumps a dozen costumes onto the ground (stolen from the mannequins in Michael's office).

And there, twenty pages in, we finally get to the crux of the concept of Power Factor. The premise is that a hero wearing a costume would be easy to kill, because the bad guys could just study him till they found a weakness: discovered a vulnerability in his powers, a flaw in his tactics, or failing that, just figured out his secret identity and threatened his family. Power Factor, then, is a group of heroes dressed in the costumes of dead heroes, who switch those costumes back and forth, so the bad guys never know exactly whom they dealing with.

This isn't completely spelled out in the story, mind you. We have a scene of Josh recruiting another hero for their stable, and then a scene where Sam Drake, dressed in the costume young Michael tried on so many years ago, confronts the grown Michael and basically says, "We're back." The first issue ends with Michael contemplating his bad guy squirt gun in an old trunk.

No, the premise is spelled out in way too much detail in a three-page text feature following the story. Editor Campiti waxes ecstatic about how awesomely different Power Factor will be from other super-team books, with an oblique slam at Watchmen thrown in for good measure. Three full pages to tell you what I said in one paragraph above.

Well, you can probably understand why Power Factor didn't take off. It was all about the concept. Ideas are cheap; what matters is the execution. Which is not to say Power Factor was horribly written or drawn. Writer Kevin Juaire did some interesting things with structure that showed he had at least a clue about storytelling. And artists Tom Lyle and Doug Hazlewood turned in a competent art job that foreshadowed their later work for DC (Lyle as penciller of Starman and Hazlewood as inker of Adventures of Superman, among others).

But what makes a series really take off is characters. And Power Factor just doesn't have them. The most distinctive character in the book, the Boss, dies halfway through the story. The "heroes" of the series, Sam and Josh, appear without fanfare late in the book, and spend most of their time standing around conversing casually with other characters they've never met. Meanwhile, fully a third of the book, seven pages, is devoted to anonymous heroes being killed off. We never know who they are, and we don't care, because they're dead within a few panels.

By the end of the first issue, there was no tension, no mystery, no excitement. Wonder Color Comics folded after this was published. A second issue was published (with art by Carmine Infantino, supposedly) by Pied Piper Comics before that company, too, folded.

Oops

So here it is, 11:30 p.m., and I've just realized that it's Wednesday and I've got no Big Audio Wednesday update. Chalk it up to severe depression over a personal mess and post-Atom Man exhaustion.

Anyway, I've been rewatching Buffy on Hulu lately. I got onto the Buffy train late--Season Four, actually, which is when the show had already passed its peak--and even though I worked at a TV station that aired the show in syndication, I had still never actually watched all the episodes, especially in order. I'm almost halfway through Season Two now, both anticipating and dreading the moment when Angel switches from Love Interest to Big Bad.

The biggest problem with Buffy on Hulu, though, is that it seems to hang up in the player even worse than other shows. The show will lock up and the player bar will suddenly announce that it is "buffering..."

That's right. Hulu has to Buffer the Vampire Slayer.

Had to say it. I'm not proud of it, but it had to be done.

A Bit of Perspective

Just as an addendum to yesterday's Vault entry, you know when Stan says this?


Here are the kinds of new titles Marvel was coming out with about that time.

Omega the Unknown (1975)
Howard the Duck (1976)
2001, A Space Odyssey (1976)
The Eternals (1976)
Godzilla (1977)
Star Wars (1977)
The Human Fly (1977)
Ms. Marvel (1977)
Red Sonja (1977)
Logan's Run (1977)
Machine Man (character introduced in 1977, got his own series in 1978)
Spider-Woman (character introduced in 1977, got her own series in 1978)
Shogun Warriors (1979)
Devil Dinosaur (1978)
Dazzler (character introduced in 1980, got her own series in 1981)
Savage She-Hulk (1980)

So now you see what Stan the Man meant by "blockbusters only." A few observations:

Marvel was going crazy with the movie tie-ins at the time, obviously. Star Wars hit huge and lasted for 107 issues. But Logan's Run was not a hit and lasted only 8. Kirby's 2001 lasted 10 issues, and a character from the series (Machine Man) was spun off into his own book the next year. Japanese licensed characters Godzilla and Shogun Warriors had brief runs as well. Real-life stuntman The Human Fly didn't last long, either.

Results were similarly hit-and-miss for the original characters as well. Kirby's creations--Machine Man, Devil Dinosaur, and The Eternals--were all canceled fairly quickly. Howard the Duck and Omega had very limited shelf lives. Red Sonja (a spin-off from Conan) lasted only 15 issues in her own book.

Marvel also tried introducing a range of female counterparts of their male signature characters. So we got Ms. Marvel (23 issues), Spider-Woman (50 issues) and the Savage She-Hulk (25 issues).

I understand that Stan the Man's appearance in Nova was a joke. Just like the FF story in which Stan agrees to do a special issue featuring the Impossible Man (which would presumably be the issue we were reading at that moment), he changes his mind as soon as the Impossible Man has left, because Marvel would never publish such a silly-looking character (said as he walks past a poster of Howard the Duck).

In Nova, he's saying that Nova is not a significant enough hero to rate a Marvel title, when in fact, we are reading him in a Marvel title at that moment. So Nova is clearly going to be more significant than Stan the Man thinks.

But the joke turned out to be on Stan, I think. Because none of the "blockbusters" published by Marvel in that period turned out to have legs. Star Wars and Spider-Woman were the best of the lot, but none of the others were able to sustain a title for more than 25 issues (two years of a monthly title). The characters have (mostly) survived in Marvel continuity and been reborn and rejiggered in attempts to make them more appealing, with some notable successes, but none of Marvel's "blockbuster" characters from the late 70's were successful out of the gate.

Out of the Vault - The Man Called Nova #5

So yeah, I guess I'm going to ride this horse till the wheels fall off or something. Last week featured the Marvel Bullpen guest-starring in Fantastic Four #176. The text feature replacing the letter column said that the Marvel offices would also feature in an upcoming issue of The Man Called Nova.

So I decided to look it up. Turns out, it was issue #5, cover dated January 1977. The cover is one of Kirby's lesser efforts, but at least it effectively conveys what goes on inside. The basic story is, Richard Rider sees a TV news story saying that Marvel Comics is looking to get hold of Nova for a potential comic book. So he changes to Nova and flies there immediately.

When he gets there, he meets Marv Wolfman and Sal Buscema (this issue's writer and penciller, natch), who want to pitch the idea for a Nova comic book to Stan Lee. The only tie-in to FF # 176 is a brief mention by Marv that "We had a little trouble here the other day, and we haven't cleaned up yet."

Turns out, Stan's out giving lectures, so to kill time, Nova, Sal, and Marv head to Central Park, where Nova demonstrates his various powers. It doesn't take long--he only has the flight, the not-so-impressive super-strength, and the invulnerability.

It does make for an amusing moment, though, when he asks a cop to shoot him. The cop protests, but his older partner says, "Take it easy, Bill. We got clearance from downtown for this." Wonder if Marvel specifically called them to clear the shooting, or if it's just a general rule of the NYPD: "If a superhero asks you to shoot him, do it." I kind of like the latter idea.

Anyway, about that time, that issue's villain, Tyrannus, shows up, driving a lame-o giant robot with a drill for a hat. Tyrannus was a bad Mole Man knock-off who first appeared in an early issue of The Incredible Hulk, and whenever I see him in a comic, my first reaction is, "who?" And then I sort of remember vaguely that he's that lame guy who shows up every now and then to provide a generic punching bag for one issue while the hero's taking a break from whatever he's really got going.

So Nova spends way too many pages making Tyrannus look like a legitimate threat, then (as is usual for Tyrannus apparently) beats him with one punch. Okay, and the threat of several more--they seriously pull the ol' "not the face" routine here, because Tyrannus is apparently the Barbi Twins' brother or something.

So with New York safe once again, Nova and the Marvel boys head back to the office to finally see Stan Lee.


It's not a bad cameo. I'm not sure whether to credit Sal Buscema or inker Tom Palmer with the Mort Drucker-like quality of the caricatures in this ish. I would say it's mostly Palmer, which is cool. His inks get pretty muddy in other places, though. He sometimes got a little too carried away with the zip gun, if you know what I mean.

So anyway, a fun issue overall, I guess, but kind of a throwaway. You could say the same about the Impossible Man's appearance in Fantastic Four #176, of course, but that issue was a breather after a multi-issue battle with Galactus and featured the return of a long-almost-forgotten character. This issue was a one-off in a string of one-offs before Nova had any real signature villains of his own (the next issue would feature the return of Condor, Powerhouse and Diamondhead, making them the first members of his recurring rogue's gallery). Plus, this was the second appearance of the Bullpen in three months, so you can see why this issue had very little of the impact that the FF one did.

Big Audio Wednesday - Superman vs. Atom Man, the Final Chapter

So here they are, the final six episodes of the Atom Man storyline from 1945.

One thing that struck me when listening to the story the first time was how bloodthirsty the story was for what was ostensibly a children's show. Multiple characters die off in gruesome ways and the death trap Sidney sets up for Superman is one of the most sadistic I've ever heard of. But kid's entertainment was different back then, nine years before Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent.

The other thing that strikes me, which I've already remarked on a few times, but which bears repeating, is how sophisticated the storytelling is. Although most children's entertainment was based around kids' short attention spans, this long form story includes twists and turns to rival any mother's soap opera or modern serial drama. All in brisk fifteen-minute chunks that have no problem holding a kid's attention.

But radio serials weren't unique in that regard. Many comic strips employed the same tricks, telling longer stories over the course of weeks and months in tiny chunks. Dick Tracy's epic battle against Flattop lasted over a year, I think.

The story so far:

Nazi scientist Der Teufel injected young Henry Miller with a solution of dissolved Kryptonite to transform him into an Atom Man, with the ability to shoot rays of radioactive death from his hands. Miller, having killed both his first mentor Der Teufel and his second mentor, the criminal genius known only as Sidney, has set off on a destructive rampage to destroy Metropolis in retaliation for the defeat of Germany.

Meanwhile, a powerless Superman lies buried alive in a bunker underneath the murdered Sidney's garage. Even if he can get himself free, he is powerless in the Atom Man's presence and has already been defeated by him twice. How can he possibly prevail?

Click the widget to listen. Files will autoplay in order.

Out of the Vault - Fantastic Four #176

Posting this a day late. Sorry.

So one of the very few blogs I read regularly anymore is snell's "Slay, Monstrobot of the Deep," and for a while now, he's had this sporadic series going where he's building up to a recap of Fantastic Four #177, featuring the Frightful Four. But the actual hook he used to start off the series was the final panel of FF #176, featuring this shot of the Frightful Four's three main members (the fourth member has changed over the years).

So I thought it would be a good change of pace, after three weeks of blogging about comics featuring real people, to jump back into a good old-fashioned mainer-than-mainstream superhero comic. And what better issue to feature than the issue that leads into snell's series, Fantastic Four #176.

Cover-dated November 1976, Fantastic Four #176, titled "Improbable As It May Seem--The Impossible Man Is Back in Town!," is a palate cleanser. The FF had just finished an epic multi-issue adventure on Counter-Earth that had culminated in a titanic battle between Galactus and the High Evolutionary. Cosmic stuff, man, and I got briefly hooked on reading FF as a result of it. Issue #176 was a low-key, comic relief interlude before the next big multi-issue arc.

So the issue opens on a spaceship as the Fantastic Four are returning to Earth. Ben Grimm is upset, because he has become the Thing once more (he had spent the previous arc as a human, wearing an exoskeleton that was an exact duplicate of his rocky self). After several pages of recap and exposition, in which we learn that Galactus is responsible for the Thing's rocky return, our heroes make reentry--with one tiny extra problem. The Impossible Man, an alien shapeshifter who can duplicate any shape and any power, has also stowed away on board.

It does not go smoothly. The tachyon-powered ship comes into too fast, and the Thing shatters the controls when he tries to decelerate (apparently, Galactus made him stronger than he was before). The ship crash-lands in the lake in Central Park, providing the Impossible Man with his first bit of entertainment.

Our heroes next attempt to take a taxi to the Baxter Building. After some hijinx involving the Invisible Woman sitting unseen on Reed's lap so they'll all be permitted to ride in the same cab, the drive is promptly cut short thanks to the Impossible Man's pranks. During the confusion of the ensuing traffic jam, the Impossible Man wanders away and ends up visiting the Marvel Bullpen, where Stan Lee and...

Oh crap!

You mean this is another comic book featuring real-world people in a superhero story? Seriously???!!!!

So okay, yeah, both DC and Marvel did this to an extent (for a DC example, see Superman vs. Muhammad Ali)., but Marvel seemed to do it more. Someday, I'll have to cover the issue of Marvel Team-up featuring the Not-Ready-for-Prime-Time Players (which was the name of the SNL cast at the time).

So yeah, Marvel had in an early issue once mentioned the fact that there was a Fantastic Four comic book that chronicled their adventures. And in Fantastic Four #176, we see a conference between Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, the FF's original creators, and Roy Thomas and George Perez, this issue's writer and penciller, over what to do for the next issue.

See, the Fantastic Four have been busy off-planet for a while now, what with fighting Galactus and all, so the guys at Marvel haven't been able to get in touch with them to find out about their latest adventure. Suddenly, Jack "King" Kirby has a craaaaazy idea...


...when the Impossible Man pops in and demands they do a comic book about him. When Stan remembers that readers didn't like Impossible Man's earlier appearance because he was too silly, the Impossible Man goes psycho. He decides to prove his real power by mimicking the powers demonstrated on the comics covers displayed around the room. He bounces around the room as Captain America's shield, blasts everything in sight with Iron Man's repulsor rays and Cyclops's optic blasts, even flies around on Namor's dainty little ankle wings.

At which point the Fantastic Four show up for a very brief battle, which draws in cameos from more Marvel artists and writers. Reed finally convinces Stan to agree to do an Impossible Man story in one very special issue of Fantastic Four, and the day is saved. All is well.

Until "Roger" (who I'm guessing is Roger Stern) shows Reed Richards a newspaper with a very disturbing classified ad. The Frightful Four are conducting supervillain auditions at the Fantastic Four's headquarters in the Baxter Building. Say what?

Our heroes rush over to the Baxter Building to find out what's going on, leading to the final confrontation with the Frightful Four, which leads into snell's series.

Overall, the issue isn't bad. The art is standard early George Perez, means lots of stiff poses and straight-on head shots (see the Fantastic Four in action above), but Joe Sinnott's inks are as slick as ever, and the story is fun.

The guys at Marvel must have been proud of it, anyway, because they replaced the normal letter column with a text feature detailing the genesis of the story, and mentioning that it would tie in to a later issue of The Man Called Nova, also featuring the Bullpen.

Can't wait.

Big Audio Wednesday - Superman vs. Atom Man, wk. 6

Five years after this serial aired on radio, Columbia produced its second movie serial starring Kirk Alyn as Superman, titled "Atom Man vs. Superman."

However, the storyline had nothing to do with the radio storyline. The plot involved Lex Luthor inventing a synthetic form of Kryptonite and using it to menace Superman. The serial, with its ultra-low budget and limited special effects, couldn't have mimicked the plotline of the radio serial. The massive destruction the Atom Man causes, to the house in Germany and to the beach cabin, as well as later events in the storyline, could not be recreated on a 50's movie serial budget.

Oh, and another thing: when I posted the Superman/Batman team-up back in December, I mentioned that I found Batman's vulnerability refreshing. The same thing is in evidence here. Superman in 1945 was not the impossibly noble icon he would become in the 50's and beyond. Instead, he is by turns devious, stupid, and in his encounters with Kryptonite and Atom Man, fearful. Fearful in a way and to a degree you would never imagine the modern-day iteration of the character acting. The helpless desperation in Bud Collyer's voice when Atom Man has him cornered is something completely unfamiliar, but not entirely unpleasant. Superman on radio is a real guy.

The story so far:

Nazi scientist Der Teufel injected chemist's son Henry Miller with a solution of dissolved Kryptonite to create an Atom Man who, with the help of a converter box and metallic gloves, can project rays of atomic destruction from his hands. In their first encounter, Atom Man blasted a helpless Superman into a coma, then attempted to destroy Metropolis for the glory of the Fatherland. He failed, having exhausted the energy of the Kryptonite in his blood in his battle with Superman.

With the help of a mysterious criminal mastermind named Sidney, Miller obtained more Kryptonite and renewed his powers. Meanwhile, Superman had a device built to warn of Kryptonite radiation nearby; the device was built into a belt that Clark Kent now wears.

Miller, having learned Superman's secret identity while posing as a reporter for the Daily Planet, helps Sidney set a trap for Superman. Sidney lures Kent to his house on the pretense of exposing Superman's secret identity, while the Atom Man hides in a closet with leaded mirror doors and thick lead paint that is opaque to Superman's X-ray vision.

What will happen next? Click the widget to listen (files will auotplay in order).

Out of the Vault - Banzai Girl #2

This is actually a bit recent for the Vault. Most of the comics I cover are from the previous century, 60's through 90's. But since I'm on a real-life-cheesecake-girls-in-comics kick, I figured I'd keep the streak alive with Banzai Girl, the Adventures of Jinky Coronado.

Published in 2002 by Sirius, Banzai Girl is the story of real-life Filipina model/hot babe Jinky Coronado. Jinky is just your average high-school girl who likes to hang out at the mall with her friends. But she is troubled by recurring dreams of herself as a fantasy princess and a futuristic warrior. In both sets of dreams, she is battling evil supernatural horrors. And when the horrors cross over into her waking life, Jinky realizes she may not be so average after all.

What made Banzai Girl unique was not just that the characters were based on Jinky's real-life friends and family. It was also that, unlike Flaxen or Barbi Twins Adventures, Jinky's adventures were written and drawn by Jinky herself (along with co-artist Wunan and colorist Michael Kelleher).

According to an interview, Jinky (it may be impertinent to keep calling her by her first name, but dammit, Jinky's just such a fun name) started the comic after attending a seminar on comics creation. It started out as a simple depiction of Jinky's life with her family and friends, but at the suggestion of incorporating more "trappings of the genre" (meaning monsters and fistfights, apparently), Jinky's marketing degree took over, and she turned the comic into every fanboy's dream.

For instance, issue #2 depicted here. As you can see, once again we have two cover illustrations (although the issue is not a flipbook, so it does not count as two front covers).

There was actually a third variant cover featuring a photo of Jinky in costume being menaced by cartoon tentacles, but I couldn't get a good scan of it (I don't have the issue, just the in-house ad to go by). You can see it here.

As the issue opens, Jinky and her best friend Katie J. are being attacked by an angry tree, giving us our first glimpse of Jinky's skirt, which can never seem to cover her ass for more than one panel. The girls escape the clutching branches, as the tree devours, then spits out, Katie's backpack. The only thing missing is some chalk she was taking to school for the blackboard.

Meanwhile, the parents in town are being possessed one by one by sinister creatures known as Shadow Whisperers, who also seem to be behind the opening of a new local mall. Bad news for teenage loiterers!

And later, as Jinky sleeps, she has a dream in which she is a futuristic warrior battling an alien ship devouring calcium deposits, and another in which she is the princess of a fantasy kingdom who is attacked by a nasty creature who sucks the bones out of one of her guards.



Jinky wakes up the next morning to discover that her parents have been possessed and more tentacles are trying to burst in through her bedroom door, while Katie J. pulls out a really big-ass gun to shoot 'em with.

The rest of the issue consists of in-house ads and photos of Jinky in her schoolgirl outfit.

And even though it seems just as silly and content-free and full of vanity as both Flaxen and Barbi Twins Adventures were, Banzai Girl is a much better comic. Because it really is a comic.

Flaxen used Susie Owens's real life as a vehicle to tell leaden lessons in self-esteem. And Barbi Twins, while trying to be flip and satirical, never had any spark; it was too obviously a flimsily-constructed publicity stunt rather than a serious effort at an entertaining comic.

But Banzai Girl, while being as vapid as most of comics of the 90's and early oughts, was at least vapid in a comic-y way. And entertaining, to boot. Jinky Coronado brought a spark and energy to her writing and art that the guns-for-hire doing the other real-girl books never did.

The proof is in the sales. While Barbi Twins Adventures was a one-shot, and Flaxen a two-shot(or perhaps more correctly, two one-shots), Banzai Girl ran for four issues, was collected into a trade edition, and more recently, a four-issue sequel series, Banzai Girls, was also published. And more apparently is on the way. Banzai Girl was that true rarity, a vanity comic that actually works as a comic.

Big Audio Wednesday - Superman vs. Atom Man, wk. 5

It may not seem very remarkable today, but the continuity in these radio serials was completely unknown to comics readers of the time. I have no hard evidence to support this, but I suspect that The Adventures of Superman radio series transformed comics writing.

Not right away, understand. But Golden Age comics were horribly written, with stories churned out in great quantities at high speed with little care given to craft. Character development, continuity, building suspense, complex plotting: none of these existed in comics which consisted mainly of 6- and 8-page stories. The comics were all about action, action, action, every page bursting with color and speed lines.

But there are no colors or speed lines on radio. So the writers of the Superman serial had to take this character, stripped of his visual appeal, and somehow write compelling stories about him. And what they did changed the character, and the face of comics, forever.

They introduced a supporting cast, including editor Perry White and cub reporter Jimmy Olsen. They introduced a weakness for Superman: Kryptonite. They concentrated on mystery stories that forced Superman to use his wits rather than his fists.

And with Henry Miller, the Atom Man, they introduced perhaps the first authentic supervillain.

Villains in the comics were usually gangsters or petty crooks with a clever gimmick. The closest they got to honest-to-goodness supervillians were the evil geniuses, mad scientists who used their knowledge to create horrible menaces like death rays or fire apes. Superman had by this time met villains like Lex Luthor and the Ultra-Humanite (who was a disembodied genius brain who possessed other bodies, but was otherwise a Luthor clone). He had also met that merry prankster, Mr. Mxyzptlk, whose magical powers caused Superman great headaches.

But Atom Man was something different: a deadly serious bad guy who could stand toe-to-toe with Superman and and beat him in a fight. That just didn't happen. The whole point of Superman, the whole appeal, was that he could beat anybody with one punch, as long as he knew whom to punch.

In that sense, Atom Man could be the precursor to the whole range of supervillains populating comics today. Even if he's not the first, the sheer popularity of the radio program would make him probably the most influential.

Before we jump into the program, though, one other observation: is it just me, or does the announcer, when he's doing the commercials hyping those ubiquitous comic buttons, sound like he's saying "commie buttons?" Was this some sinister cereal-fueled plot to turn our kids into Commies?

'Collect all your favorites--Stalin, Lenin, and of course, there's lovable old Trotsky with his little beard. Wear 'em on your jacket or trade with your friends. Just make sure not to ask any questions if your friend shows up with a button missing...'

Anyway, enjoy the next weeks' worth of programs.

The story so far:

In their first battle, Atom Man zapped Superman into a near-death coma, killed his mentor Der Teufel, then left to attack Metropolis. However, his battle with Superman had exhausted the Kryptonite energy in his blood. So he contacted the mysterious fat man, Sidney, to obtain more Kryptonite from the Scarlet Widow.

Meanwhile, Superman's comatose body was discovered by hunters and taken to the hospital, where doctors were unable to help him due to his impenetrable skin. He finally revived enough to escape the hospital and made his way back to the Daily Planet as Clark Kent, still dazed and incoherent. Perry White decided to take him to Florida to recuperate.

Enjoy.