Comic Book Review: Adventure Comics #493

Comic Book Review: Adventure Comics #493 edited by Carl Gafford

It’s time for another Adventure Comics digest, though the cover is somewhat misleading.

“When Destiny Calls!” story by Bob Rozakis, pencils by George Tuska, inks by Andy Mushynsky, is what it purports to be, a revised retelling of the origin of the Challengers of the Unknown. After a dedication to Jack Kirby, the story opens on the set of “Incredible People”, a Las Vegas-shot television show honoring persons who’ve done something incredible, like the three unnamed women this week. Next week, four men whose exploits have taken them to every corner of the globe, on land, under the sea, and in the sky! However, a shadowy figure laughs and says that one of the planned guests isn’t going to make it. Based on the posture and double-V gesture he makes, the obvious suspect is President Nixon. (Spoiler: it’s not Nixon.)

Five days later in a small Texas airport, daredevil Red Ryan realizes he’s looking at heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Davis. Before they can remark what a coincidence this is, deep sea diver and scientist Prof Haley does. Rocky almost admits to reading Haley’s books, but stops lest it ruin his meathead reputation. They’re joined by test pilot Ace Morgan, who offers them a ride to Las Vegas in his new custom jet, the “Lucky Ace.”

Rocky manages to maintain his lowbrow rep by smashing a soft drink bottle to christen the ship, the acidic fizz damaging the paint. He’s allowed aboard anyway.

In the middle of the flight, unexpected heavy weather hits. It’s bad enough that Ace takes the plane above the clouds, only for his controls to go haywire. Each of the men thinks last thoughts as the ship careens towards a fatal crash.

Except it isn’t fatal. Ace manages, somehow, to make it a landing that they can walk away from, even though the plane’s a complete loss. None of them are even scratched, and Red’s watch is still ticking. Prof remarks that they’re “living on borrowed time.” Spooky!

Ace examines the wreckage, and discovers a gizmo that isn’t on the parts list. It’s a remote control designed to cause the crash–which means someone tried to kill them!

The remote control is the new part of the origin story–in the original, the four just decided to become the Challengers then and there, and we cut to one of their amazing missions. I’m going to guess that this was originally meant to be a backup feature in another comics magazine and repurposed to Adventure when the format switch hit.

“Lana Lang and the Legion of Super-Heroes!” story by Otto Binder, art by George Papp, is the ringer. We open on Superboy using his powers to cut the grass at the Smallville Hospital. Lana Lang takes photographs of this minor but still nifty feat. Superboy fails to acknowledge the new green dress she bought hoping to impress him. Back home, we see Lana in her stalker shrine, mooning over her many pictures of her crush. She realizes her next door neighbor Clark Kent is at home, so closes the blind lest he should look in and laugh at her obsession.

Clark wouldn’t laugh, for he himself is Superboy! He lights Pa Kent’s cigar with his heat vision now that Lana’s not looking. Lana goes to a movie, and sees a stupid romantic comedy where the “make your real target jealous by dating someone else” ploy actually works. Lana’s one worry is that there’s no boy awesome enough to make Superboy jealous.

Meanwhile, Clark is suddenly ringed by giant horseshoes, then frozen in an ice clump, then sees giant letters flying through the sky setting up a meeting. When Superboy arrives, he meets a young man named Thom Kallor from the future planet Xanthu. One day he flew the family spacecraft through the tail of a comet, normally a harmless activity. But this particular comet had an unusual radiation. It interfered with the controls of the craft, and Thom crashed, but emerged unharmed.

It turned out that the radiation had given Thom powers roughly equivalent to Superboy’s, and he became the superhero of Xanthu, Star Boy. He was even offered a chance to join the prestigious Legion of Super-Heroes! As for why he’s here in the Smallville time zone, two Xanthu criminals had escaped, and one managed to travel through time and space to this era. Star Boy was able to capture him and place him in a cave.

However, the other one back on Xanthu in the 30th Century is hiding out somewhere among the copper plumbing, and copper is the one thing Star Boy’s vision can’t penetrate. So he’s asking Superboy to return with him to flush out the crook. Superboy leaves to alert his foster-parents that he’s leaving, and Star Boy reminds him not to use Thom’s civilian name in front of the crook.

Just this last bit is overheard by Lana Lang, who was picking flowers in the vicinity. She decides to bluff and pretend she heard Star Boy’s secret identity so that she can blackmail him into going along with Operation Jealousy. Sadly, she’s reckoned without Superboy’s super-hearing. He overhears her giving Star Boy his marching orders, to pretend to be smitten.

Superboy plays along for the moment, and Star Boy takes Lana back to Smallville to get permission for her to visit the future. Thom’s pretty pure-hearted so it doesn’t occur to him to just ditch her at her house, since she’d never get back to the cave in time to talk to the crook. We also see Star Boy’s electro-vision in action, a power Superboy doesn’t have.

The four head to the future and land on Xanthu. The first criminal is imprisoned, and Superboy goes in seach of the second. It’s a fairly easy search as the criminal is the only person inside a copper flood tube. Lana goes into high gear ordering Star Boy around to “prove” his devotion to her, but Superboy doesn’t seem the least bit jealous. Indeed, he soon is involved with a local girl, Zynthia.

Lana is consumed with jealousy herself, and finally confesses what she’s been up to. Superboy reveals he knew all along, and Zynthia was just playing along with him because she’s Thom’s girlfriend. The chastened Lana is returned to Smallville by Superboy, who needs to catch up on his home workload.

So…Lana Lang doesn’t meet the Legion, just one of their members who isn’t even doing Legion stuff at the time. There’s a couple of bizarre things about this story. First, it was a reskin of a 1953 story about Lana trying the same thing with a character named Marsboy. Since hanging on to old comics to recheck stories was virtually unknown back then, very few of the audience would have remembered the previous tale. But since the Legion had become a thing in the years since, Mr. Binder chose to tie this new character in to them.

While Star Boy was officially an LSH member, for quite a while he didn’t directly appear in Legion stories, always being off on another off-planet mission. When he finally did appear, he had an entirely different set of powers and Zynthia was never mentioned again. Lana would eventually actually meet the Legion and become a reservist as Insect Queen.

“Is This My Foe?..” script by Steve Skeates, art by Jim Aparo, is our Aquaman chapter. Aquaman emerges from the Abyss into the territory of the savage and superstitious Maarzon. He’s attacked on sight by one of the natives. Several more pile in, and Aquaman is temporarily distracted by recapping the missing Mera plotline. He snaps back in just in time to overcome this first encounter.

Aquaman’s attempt to search the area is complicated by the fact that the Maarzon are hostile to intruders, and he doesn’t speak their language. All he sees are random fights for reasons he’s not privy to. But then an outside ship appears, shaped like a manta. And swimming out of it is–Black Manta!

Black Manta’s one of Aquaman’s recurring enemies, an undersea pirate who is honestly just the worst, personality-wise. The Maarzon bow to him. Aquaman puts two and two together, and gets five. Black Manta must be the one behind Mera’s abduction! So he breaks cover and charges at the villain.

Black Manta urges the Maarzon into battle, but Aquaman’s cleaning the ocean floor with them. He figures out that Mera’s missing and Aquaman thinks he did it. As it happens, Black Manta isn’t behind it…this time. But he doesn’t deny it, using the situation to goad Aquaman into a one-on-one duel with Maarzon spears.

As it happens, Black Manta’s been expertly trained in spear combat, and he’s cheating by using his helmet lenses to emit a ray that makes Aquaman dizzy if he looks at it. This puts our hero at a significant disadvantage.

Back in Atlantis, Aquagirl notes that Deputy Narkran is becoming more tyrannical by the day, something the Atlantean citizens are unlikely to put up with for long. She tries to talk it over with Aqualad, but the hospital says he can’t have visitors. (Amusing bit: the Atlantean nurse wears a land-dweller style nursing cap.) Behind closed doors, the doctors are very worried about the boy.

Returning to the duel already in progress, Black Manta manages to get a good shot in, injuring Aquaman’s arm. But before he can press his advantage, the Sea Monarch gains his second wind, and counters solidly, soon pressing the villain into a corner. Black Manta signals his ship, which teleports him away.

Aquaman asks about Black Manta’s honor among the Maarzon, but the villain counters that he’s their god…of evil. They expect him to lie and act without honor! He lets drop that he didn’t kidnap Mera, but he might know who did…but he’s just going to leave that for Aquaman to ponder. Told you he was a jerk.

The Maarzon swarm Aquaman, but he’s able to beat them all off. However, now he has no clue where to go next in his search.

“A Nightmare Called Gorgonus!” written by Len Wein, art by Dick Giordano, stars Zatanna. Zatanna Zatara is the daughter of Golden Age hero Giovanni Zatara, and inherited both his skills as a stage magician and the ability to cast actual magic spells by speaking backwards.

Currently, our heroine is practicing her mundane magic act at the old Edison Theatre, witnessed only by her business manager Jeffrey Sloane. Old-timey stage magic just isn’t drawing the crowds like it used to, but Zatanna doesn’t want to sully her craft by resorting to the supernatural.

They’re about to leave for dinner when they hear noises backstage. They should be the only ones here, so investigate. Nothing is visible, but Zatanna senses malignant vibes. While she’s trying to sort them out, behind her something grabs Jeffrey and pulls him up into the rafters.

This turns out to be the work of Gorgonus, a large humanoid with snakes for hair. They’d previously encountered him in the other-dimensional Tower of the Dead, when the monster had apparently died and fallen into a portal. In fact, the portal must have been directed to this theater when Zatanna used her magic to return.

Gorgonus wants Zatanna to either send him back home or die, and Zatanna’s magic isn’t accurate enough to do the former. There’s some ups and downs to the fight, then she tricks her opponent into turning himself into stone. That should hold him for a while.

“Supergirl’s Three Super Girl-Friends!” story by Jerry Siegel, art by Jim Mooney begins with Linda Lee, Supergirl’s first secret identity, at the orphanage. A couple of the other female teen orphans are mooning over a hot television star. One is an especial fan who got a letter back. Linda sadly muses that it would be nice to have girl friends that she could honestly share her hopes and dreams with.

Alas, this is the era when Supergirl was Superman’s “secret weapon” so she can’t even appear in public as herself, let alone get involved with friends who might want to know her secrets. But a telepathic voice tells her she is not, in fact, alone.

After summoning a Linda robot to cover for her at the orphanage, Supergirl hastens to meet the mysterious visitor. It’s a young woman wearing a lead mask, and challenging Kara to figure out who she is. Supergirl can’t guess, even though she only knows one telepath who wears that particular costume.

The mysterious stranger asks Supergirl to look behind her, and another girl, this one unmasked, emerges from the ground. And yet another girl arrives by rocket-pack, this one turning into three identical girls! They all know who she is, sending Kara into a panic. Finally the penny drops and Supergirl realizes that the masked girl is Saturn Girl of the Legion of Super-Heroes, from the 30th Century.

The other girls introduce themselves as Phantom Girl and Triplicate Girl, who each have special powers because everyone on their planets does. Supergirl is thrilled to have superheroines her age to talk to, and it turns out the Legionnaires are there to ask her into the future so she can try out for the club again.

She flashes back to her last attempt, and the stupid reason she couldn’t join the first time–Red Kryptonite had turned her into an adult for a few hours and the club’s for teenagers only.

In the future, Cosmic Boy explains that they’ve changed the rules since last year–one each boy and girl will be selected. Other applicants are Shrinking Violet, Bouncing Boy and Sun Boy…and a surprise! There’s a green-skinned boy, who is revealed to have the codename Brainiac 5.

He explains that he’s the descendant of the notorious Brainiac, the space criminal who shrunk Kandor into a bottle and had been a recurring enemy of Superman. Five assures her that he and his ancestors, Brainiacs 2-4, also hated their forefather for his crimes, and are glad that he perished fighting Superman.

We then get the tale of Brainiac’s final battle, in which his pet space monkey Koko “accidentally” turned off the villain’s impenetrable force field, allowing Brainiac to be shrunk out of existence . (This was before retcons made the original Brainiac a sophisticated humanoid robot, which required some fancy tapdancing around Brainiac 5’s backstory. He also turned out not to be actually dead in the 30th Century, but that’s a story for another time.)

Tryouts begin, and Supergirl immediately takes the lead by obtaining Excalibur, Achilles’ helmet and King Richard the Lion-Hearted’s shield. (I don’t recall that the Legion having Excalibur in their trophy room ever got focused on in a story, but I could be wrong.)

Brainiac 5 makes his case by furnishing Supergirl with a forcefield belt he designed just before a Green Kryptonite meteor strikes her. It completely protects her from the harmful radiation, but since it was his only belt, he could have been injured or killed without it. It’s now been attuned so only she can wear it, and he’ll have to build another.

The two are inducted into the Legion, and it’s clear they are starting to think fondly of each other.

Back in the 20th Century, Supergirl is invited to Atlantis by Lori Lemaris, Superman’s one-time mermaid love interest. Jerro, the merboy who has a crush on Supergirl, is also there. They allow her to dispose of a Kryptonite meteorite with her new radiation proof force field. However, after she gets rid of the thing, it turns out that time travel drained the force field batteries, and the belt is irreparably damaged before Kara can recharge it.

At the orphanage, the other civilian girls ask Linda if she has a boyfriend, and she demurs, since she can talk about neither the merboy nor the future hero (and apparently Dick Malverne hasn’t happened yet.)

Much more of a Legion story, even if we get little of any of the characters beyond Brainy. The future would do a lot to flesh these heroes out.

“The Twisted Powers” (no credits given) is a Captain Marvel story. Billy Batson, boy radio broadcaster, arrives at Pine Valley, a remote resort location, hoping for a restful vacation. Turns out that one of the other guests is a big fan of his, and she is an even bigger fan of Captain Marvel. Billy says it’s unlikely the World’s Mightiest Mortal will be showing up.

Billy hasn’t even finished unpacking before robbers arrive to steal from the resort guests. He speaks the magic word, “SHAZAM!” Up in the clouds, Zeus, god of lightning responds by getting ready to throw one of his thunderbolts. Zeus is asked to stop by a person who goes unnamed in the story but is presumably Hephaestus, the smith god–too late! The lightning is already on its way.

Billy transforms into Captain Marvel, who runs to the scene of the robbery. To everyone’s surprise, the Big Red Cheese fails to knock out a robber with a single punch, and himself is knocked off his feet by that criminal’s blow. He can’t fly, and isn’t invulnerable, so the robbers get away clean.

Cap turns back into Billy, and the lad fails to notice that a rock he kicked flew several yards. The female guest from earlier is scathing in her disappointment at the superhero’s failure. Billy goes to bed worried that his powers may never return.

The criminals realize that with Captain Marvel powerless, now is the time to lure him into a trap. They know he tends to show up whenever Billy Batson is in danger, so they sneak into the kid’s room, tie and gag him, then toss the boy out a window. Billy’s a bit surprised he wasn’t hurt in the fall, and the gag fell loose, so he turns back into Captain Marvel.

Cap tries to fight the crooks, but he’s once again without powers, and is easily overpowered. Just as one of the criminals is pointing a gun at his head, the hero realizes what’s going on, and switches back. The bullets bounce off Billy, and he curbstomps the robbers, even flying to catch the last one. Now that they’re all subdued, Billy says the magic word so that Captain Marvel can take credit for the win.

Up in Olympus, Zeus finally learns he’s been using defective thunderbolts, and is given a freshly made batch.

Captain Marvel is thrilled to have his powers back, and Billy is able to relax for the rest of his vacation.

It’s an interesting use of the mechanics of Captain Marvel’s powers as they stood at the time.

“The Ghost of Ace Chance!” story by Gardner Fox, art by Murphy Anderson, is our Spectre closer. We open on the title character, Ace Chance, a con man with a gambling problem. He’s hit a bad streak of luck recently, and owes $10,000 to a gangster named Booth Cody. So he’s on a gambling ship outside the three-mile limit from Gateway City, trying to hit it big at roulette.

Whether he wins or loses, he plans to quit gambling after tonight to pursue a relationship with Mona Marcy, the world’s richest woman. It doesn’t matter to him that they’ve never even met, as he’s got a surefire plan to use his good looks and charm to make her fall in love with him. And if he doesn’t have that ten grand? That’s Booth Cody’s problem! Ace Chance is light-hearted as he loses his last penny.

When the ship docks, Ace finds out Mr. Cody has sent two goons to punish him for non-payment. The noise catches the attention of police detective Jim Corrigan, who is at the docks because he’d gotten a tip about a possible robbery at the Marine Museum. By the time Corrigan arrives, the goons are dumping Ace into a tank of supercooled liquid natural gas.

Ace Chance feels his spirit leaving his body, moving towards the hereafter. Outside the tank, Corrigan is beating up the goons. The Spectre separates from Jim as he’s sensed that there’s still a spark of life in Chance’s body. The Spectre enters the near-corpse to revitalize it, and notes the soul is not there. Ace’s ghost is pulled back to the living world, but he can’t get back in his body as the Spectre is in there.

So he needs someplace to crash, and senses that there’s a soulless body nearby–Jim Corrigan! This is a stroke of luck, Jim’s sterling reputation will only enhance Ace’s chances with Mona Marcy. (Yep, he’s still on that bicycle.)

The Spectre is surprised at Jim driving off and just leaving the goons, but he’s going to be busy, so drops the goons at police headquarters and Ace Chance’s body off at the hospital before returning to the Marine Museum, where a robbery is already in progress. The Spirit of Vengeance shows off a few tricks and hauls them in as well.

Spectre’s ready to return to Jim Corrigan’s body to rest, but a series of “natural” disasters strikes, keeping him busy and exhausting his energy. By the time he gets back to Gateway City, Jim Corrigan is resigning from the police force. The Spectre is now too weak to force Ace out, and notes that the other spirit is brimming with evil energy.

The Spectre flies around the world collecting “good” energy. Peace Corps volunteers, prayer services, healers, etc. In the days it takes him to do this, Chance in Corrigan’s body is able to woo Mona Marcy, and at last is about to pop the question. The Spectre returns and rips Ace Chance’s ghost from the borrowed body.

Ace is mostly ready, having studied up on the black arts. He’s able to shift the scenery to various sites of evil around the world, hurling their hazards at the Spectre. The wicked ghost is even able to enlist the secret population of dark magic practitioners around the world to combine their powers against the hero. All to little avail, and the struggle drains Chance’s evil energies. But he has one last ace up his sleeve, pun intended.

He’s switched his own and Jim Corrigan’s bodies and covered Jim with an illusion of being Ace. Once the Spectre puts him back into Corrigan’s body, Chance will be able to dig in permanently. But Ace has made a tiny error, and the Spectre sees through the trap.

Ace Chance is returned to his own barely living body, probably to live the rest of his life as a vegetable, and the Spectre rejoins Jim Corrigan. He’s done all the heavy lifting, so Jim will have to figure out how to deal with leaving the force and Mona Marcy wanting to marry him.

Another fine digest issue, though the Lana Lang story is kind of weak.