Comic Book Review: Adventure Comics #498

Comic Book Review: Adventure Comics #498 edited by Carl Gafford & Nicola Cuti

I just keep having these pop up out of my boxes o’ stuff!

“Plastic Man” written by Len Wein, art by Joe Staton & Bob Smith, is the first in a revival series. At the National Bureau of Investigation, shadowy figures in the inner chamber called D.I.P. consider whether Plastic Man has become a traitor. (The shadowy figures are all pipe-smoking police commissioners, though my memory only identifies Commissioner Dolan of The Spirit.) They synopsize Plas’ origin story: petty criminal Eel O’Brien accidentally gains the power to stretch and shapeshift, exposure to kindly monks convinces him to turn over a new leaf. Also, Woozy Winks is there.

The current assignment was to escort Syndicate stool pigeon Carlton “Yellowbelly” Canary safely to headquarters for interrogation. Woozy complains about how boring the job is, and Plas reminds him that as he isn’t actually an NBI agent, Woozy doesn’t have to be here. Which also ticks the sidekick off, since he’s been doing unpaid labor for the agency for years and they won’t even give him a badge.

Then it turns out the train they’re on is filled with mobsters in disguise, and a huge fight breaks out. Our heroes win, but Canary’s gone missing. No explanation was found, and as of the beginning of this meeting, Plastic Man has failed to report in. Except, of course, he’s been here all along, disguised as one of the filing cabinets! He delivers Canary, somehow recaptured offscreen.

Outside the meeting, Woozy decides that based on his help, the NBI will finally give him agent status–but is kicked out the door after two minutes.

There’s an uncredited pinup of Legion of Super-Heroes member Bouncing Boy, which is a segue to the next story.

“The Secret Origin of Bouncing Boy!” story by Jerry Siegel, art by John Forte, starts with fans trying to get near the LSH headquarters as it’s annual try-out day. A forceshield holds them off, and the young heroes hold a brief meeting to explain several of their members are off-world. Then it’s back outside to give the potential members room to show off.

The tryouts are crashed by Lester Spiffany, son of Earth’s richest jewelry store magnate. Lester has no powers beyond super-entitlement, and attempts to buy his way into the Legion with a large gem. He’s firmly rejected. Next up is Storm Boy, who has impressive weather control abilities–but only when his hand is in his pocket. Turns out he’s using a weather control machine that has its controls in his outfit, and since all Legionnaires must have innate powers, he’s given the boot as well by Triplicate Girl.

A short recess is called to allow other fakers to leave. The applicants now seem worried–the Legion has tough standards! Cosmic Boy decides to let one of the present Legionnaires tell how he or she joined, oh! the random selector picked Bouncing Boy. His birth name is Chuck Taine, and some years ago, he was an errand boy for a scientist.

His assignment was to carry a bottle of experimental instant super-plastic fluid to the Science Council. Being a teenager, he decided he had time to take in a robot gladiator fight at the local arena. This exciting sport was played by teams of four players, each controlling a limb of one of the robot warriors. (I could see this as a shounen sports manga premise.) Chuck bought a bottle of soda pop for the lordly sum of fifty cents (a reader brought up this fantastic sum in a letter to the editor and the editor had to explain the concept of ludicrous future inflation.) In the boy’s excitement, he swigged the wrong bottle!

Chuck swelled up into a spherical shape and started bouncing randomly, ruining the title bout. Fortunately, he returned to his normal appearance a few minutes later and was able to sneak out of the arena before being lynched. At the hospital, Chuck learned that his biochemistry had permanently altered, allowing him to become Bouncing Boy at will.

Chuck decides to use his new bouncing abilities for good, and applies to the Legion of Super-Heroes very early in their existence. They don’t see how just bouncing would be useful in fighting crime or rescue work, so reject him. He tried being a hero on his own, but made a mess instead, so became ridiculed by the public. However, he eventually ran into a smash and grab robber with an electric gimmick that allowed the criminal to paralyze anyone he touched. Including Saturn Girl when she got too close.

Chuck took advantage of his bouncing to not be grounded when touched, so the paralysis didn’t work and he was able to overcome the crook. (At the time, the Legion didn’t have anyone who could fly under their own power, and hadn’t developed their individual flight devices.) Having demonstrated his usefulness and coolness under fire, Bouncing Boy was inducted into the Legion.

This story inspires the tryout candidates to do their best, and we later find out one of them was Matter-Eater Lad. While Chuck was usually used as a comic relief character, and him being fat was not always sensitively handled, it was still nice to have a heavyset kid who was unmistakably heroic and useful on the team.

“Come the Revolution” story by Steve Skeates, art by Jim Aparo, opens with the reunited Aquaman and Mera headed back to Atlantis, but immediately cuts to that city, where the misrule of Narkran has given rise to a revolutionary movement. Tula, the Aquagirl, attempts to calm the revolutionary leader, assuring him that Aquaman will soon return and put things to right. But how many people will be hurt by the dictator before then?

After Tula leaves, Dex, the leader’s right-hand man, suggests that she is making the leader soft. While the leader denies this, he does decide to move the date of the rebellion up to today.

The revolution comes, but we cut to Aquaman and Mera finding Aqualad’s sea horse Imp, apparently abandoned in the middle of nowhere. They pause their journey to check for Garth’s presence.

Back in the city, Aquagirl is captured by Narkran’s soldiers, who are under the impression that she’s more important to the rebels than she actually is. They take her to the dictator, who in the tradition of dictators everywhere, does not handle people fighting back at all well. His plan is to drag Tula out on a balcony and threaten to kill her if the rebels don’t surrender.

The revolutionary leader decides that he can’t risk having an innocent killed, and disarms. Dex is appalled by this decision, and the rebels start fighting amongst themselves. Narkran doesn’t understand that this is actually working in his favor, and becomes more manic in his demands for surrender.

Aquaman and Mera come across Aqualad fighting a giant sea monster.

Dex finally gets the better of the leader, and orders the rebels back on the attack. Tula finally breaks free of Narkran’s grip, but is stabbed badly in the process. The revolutionary leader sees her falling and is enraged, swimming up to take Narkran on personally. It’s one on one to the death!

We’re promised a full resolution in the next issue, which I’ve already reviewed here.

“The World’s Maddest Ghost!” (not credited) is a Captain Marvel story. Doctor Sivana, the world’s maddest scientist, attempts once again to kill Billy Batson, alter ego of Captain Marvel. Failing in this, Dr. Sivana attempts killing the big red cheese with a flying warship, only to have it crash fatally. His corpse is buried, and the world breathes a sigh of relief.

But then Sivana’s ghost appears. He claims to have learned from his wasted life, and now wants to do good. Nope. The body Captain Marvel found was a dummy made of flesh-like plastic, and Sivana is still very much alive and still evil. He almost has Billy, but is distracted by a gimmick set up earlier in the story. Seven pages, people. Nowadays, this would be an entire miniseries.

“The Man Who Knew All the Answers” by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby is a Sandman tale. Professor Hiram Gaunt is a teacher from a small engineering school who gets the chance to address the National Science Association. He raves about a device for increasing human brain power by vibrations, but is dismissed as a crank. (Probably because he used the “humans only use 25% of their brains” line.) As it happens, he’s already built a prototype and uses it in his garret laboratory.

The device apparently works, heightening Gaunt’s speed of thought and allowing him to seemingly draw knowledge out of the very air. (He claims this includes supernatural knowledge, but we never see him do actual magic.) He correctly divines that the janitor is moving to a new job, to the amazement of that fellow who was keeping it a secret. Then he defeats a professional chess player eight times in a row. And just to show off, he breaks a local casino at roulette. Gaunt still needs more money for his master plan, whatever that is.

Which is where the Sandman and Sandy come in. They spot Professor Gaunt lurking outside a bank at night, and are astonished when he easily unlocks the door. And the vault. When they try to apprehend him, Gaunt manages to trick them inside the vault and then closes them inside. They have to set off the alarm to get the police to free them.

Wesley Dodds realizes that the bank robber must be some kind of genius, and spots a news item about the chess match. He conjectures that these easy successes will have made the criminal cocky. Across town, some gangsters connect the robbery and the casino incident and decide they need this mysterious figure on their side.

The Sandman contrives a trap based on the classic Mechanical Turk gambit, creating a chess-playing robot that’s actually operated by Sandy who cheats by having a bunch of chess books at hand. Gaunt falls for it, though Sandy is only able to stalemate the genius even with cheating.

Gaunt goes to the casino he broke before, where he is invited to meet some people who are very interested in him. Oh, and it turns out the old janitor is there and recognizes the professor. Wesley and Sandy pump the old man, only to be tossed out by the gangsters for being snoopy.

Just as the gangsters are making their proposition for a team-up to Gaunt, Sandman and Sandy burst in, and mayhem ensues. The police arrive and all the criminals are arrested. Professor Gaunt realizes he doesn’t know the answer to “how to escape the Sandman” and as far as I know is never seen again. (But with his abilities could easily find a lucrative yet legal career path.)

“Sun-Boy’s Lost Power!” story by Jerry Siegel, art by John Forte has Sun Boy and a couple other Legionnaires attending an unveiling at Metropolis Stadium. It turns out to be a statue of Sun Boy, glowing in imitation of his powers. It then falls over, endangering spectators and forcing Sun Boy to melt it. While they are flying home, Sun Boy attempts to use his powers to mitigate a blackout, but suddenly no longer has them.

Now, if you’ve read a lot of Silver Age comics, the obvious assumption is that the thing with the statue was some sort of evil plot to depower Sun Boy, probably set up by the villain we saw on the splash page. Surprisingly, no. As far as can be determined from the text, it’s just a wacky coincidence.

We get a one phrase version of Sun Boy’s origin story, “locked in an atomic reactor” (see my review of the full origin elsewhere) and the Legion tries re-enacting it, but that fails to restart his powers, as does lowering him into a volcano. His powers return momentarily when he’s standing next to a jar of alien fireflies, which suggests that a living being’s heat/light might do the trick.

So Sun Boy asks Superboy and Ultra Boy, who have just arrived through time, to assist. Alas, not even their combined heat and flash visions succeed in reigniting his flame. And sad as it may seem, without his powers, Dirk Morgna can no longer be a Legion member. He cleans out his locker, including a LSH Porta-Monitor. He uses the monitor to watch a Legion mission, and there’s something odd about Superboy and Ultra Boy’s flight patterns, but before he can put a finger on it, Bouncing Boy comes by to confiscate the monitor.

Hey, didn’t we have a villain on the splash page? We are finally introduced to Kranyak, an imprisoned criminal who is serving a long sentence after being caught by Sun Boy. He’s managed to get a gaseous form pill smuggled in to him, and uses it to escape. He rejoins his gang, and the first order of business is…revenge!

The gang harasses but does not actually harm Dirk, and Kranyak boasts that he will soon destroy the Legion, and there’s nothing the powerless hero can do to stop him. Dirk naturally lets the Legion know about this, and finally a penny drops. He hires a single-person ship to take him to the planet Lurna, known for its monsters.

One of those monsters is a Kryptonian Flame-Beast (basically a wingless dragon) that hatched from an egg planted on the planet before the destruction of its homeworld. He annoys it into firing a flame breath attack at him, and sure enough, Dirk’s powers are restored!

Sun Boy heads back to Earth, where he’s just in time to save the Legionnaires from being crushed by a giant iceberg Kranyak had created. He explains his renewed powers. But why didn’t Superboy and Ultra Boy cure him? Easy to explain, those heroes are in fact robotic duplicates sent by the real heroes to cover their absence at Pete Ross’ birthday party. Their programming was damaged, just enough for them not to mention the robot thing, and Sun Boy figured it out because they were magnetically attracted to Cosmic Boy! The Legion enthusiastically welcomes Sun Boy back, happy ending!

“The Thanksgiving Thieves!” story by E. Nelson Bridwell, art by Bob Oksner stars Mary Marvel. Mary Bromfield was born Mary Batson, twin sister to Billy Batson. Due to shenanigans, they were separated, and she was adopted by the wealthy Bromfield family. During the adventure in which Billy discovered her existence, the wizard Shazam granted her magical powers as well, though from a different list of gods and heroes. Thus she became Mary Marvel, the world’s mightiest girl!

Thanksgiving, 1973, Mary bids a temporary farewell to her adoptive mother, who isn’t in on the secret, so that she can be Grand Marshal of the Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Billy and Freddy had other obligations.) There’s even a giant balloon version of Mary Marvel, Unfortunately, there’s a trio of thieves named Sneak, Bruiser and Tricks trying to pull off a fur robbery while the police are distracted.

Mary spots them, and while Tricks’ gimmicks slow her down a teensy, the outcome is never in doubt. Too bad the balloon got destroyed. It’s a slight story, showing how even in the 1970s the decompression of storytelling was beginning.

“The Spectre Means Death?” story and art by Neal Adams, is our last story. It opens with a mysterious faceless man stealing a mysterious glowing orb from an old man in Northern India. Back in the Occident, the faceless man ponders his orb, wondering why it’s showing him a random drifter. Then it turns out the drifter is holding a glowing bullet in his hand. Clearly it’s an item of power, but when the faceless one tries to draw it to him, the bullet dissolves.

Cut to a shopping mall, where the drifter has turned into a giant with ragged clothing and glowing eyes. Having gone berserk, it’s causing property damage and scaring the crowd. Detective-Captain Jim Corrigan decides to unleash his alter ego, the Spectre to do crowd control. But when the giant sees the Spectre, he reacts in abject fear, and so does the rest of the crowd. Even the most peaceful, law-abiding civilians find themselves gibbering in terror of imminent death.

The Spectre freezes the crowd in time so he can save them from the consequences of their panic, but this drains his power and the giant is able to escape.

This repeats several times. The giant appears, then turns the people around him into frightened sheeple terrified of the Spectre, and property damage and drainage of the Spectre’s energy ensue. Worse, Jim Corrigan refuses to let the Spectre back into his body to rest, as he no longer fully trusts the grim ghost.

The faceless man turns out to be the Psycho-Pirate, master of emotion control, draining the Spectre’s power through the giant to restore his face (erased by Dr. Fate) and thus his full abilities. The bullet is the one Azmodus empowered back in the first issue. And in a twist of fate, the drifter is actually “Gat” Benson, the gangster who murdered Jim Corrigan and was the first criminal captured by the Spectre. Back then, the Spectre was at his most fearsome, and it’s not surprising that Benson reacts as though he’s the angel of death.

Benson is ordered to murder Corrigan, but his fragile mind can’t handle the contradiction, and Jim is able to take down the Psycho- Pirate and restore his correct relationship with his ghost.

Another interesting set of stories, with the Mary Marvel one being the rarest to reprint. Mostly for the collector.