I mean, look at it--we've got Superbaby AND gorillas...this is like all my favorite DC hobbyhorses wrapped up into a big nerdgasm!!Sadly, though, as per usual, the cover lies to us. Superbaby is NOT in this story, and at no point does he fight monkeys. Sigh. I demand my 20¢ back--with 35 years compound interest, of course.
What we do have, though, is what would have been sold to us as an Elseworlds story, had it come up 20 years later (now, of course, it's Earth-17.5). It's an imaginary story, wherein Kal-El spacecraft crashes in deepest Africa instead of Kansas. Whereupon Kal-El is raised by gorillas as one of their own. Yup, they're ripping off Tarzan, Krypton-style. Mommy ape names him Karkan, which was apparently just far enough away from Tarzan to avoid legal action by the Burroughs estate. We pick up the action when teenage Karkan discovers other..um...."hairless ones."
I won't go into great detail on this comic--if you've read or seen ANY version of Tarzan EVER, than you can write this story in your sleep, up to and including where Karkan fights wicked hunters and is eventually lured to join human civilization by the pretty white girl. Yawn...where's Bo Derek when you really need her??
Still, the issue is chock full of wondrous editorial notes, such as:
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you just witnessed the invention of ape font. Still, I would have declared this the greatest comic of all time if they had had the cajones to actually do the whole story in ape language...Also:
See-far power?? It's a good thing he never describes his super-breath! Sigh...where's Grodd when you need him?Anyway, I suppose I should just share the big payoff with you:
Mmmm, taste that derivative goodness. I warned you--not a shred of original thinking went into this issue. Still...Gorillas!! Superbaby!!! I'll probably get cranky again tomorrow, but for today, all is well in my world. Because Superbaby am king of the apes!!
Wasted potential to be the greatest story ever from Superboy #183, 1972. If only...If only...
Ah, KARKAN! One of my favorite Superboy covers....but not one of my favorite stories. The late 60's and early 70's may have been the period of the biggest disconnect between DC's rather exciting, provacative covers and their lackluster interior stories (this issue is a great example of that). Alot of that had to do with alot of the "Old Guard" still writing many of Superman's adventures, whose idea of exciting, original storytelling no longer matched expectations for superhero comics. Of course, DC still cranked out plenty of sucky stories once the Young Turks showed up (though I would pin alot of the blame on the Old Guard mentality of editors like Julius Schwartz), but man....this was a bizarre era of comic book publishing.
ReplyDeleteYes. If this story had come up a decade earlier, they would have made it a 2-parter and spun off in wonderfully insane ways.
ReplyDeleteAnd if it were written today, it would end soon after Donna Troy, jason Todd, and Kyle Rayner discovered that Ray Palmer wasn't there...
You neglected to tell us what the big red 'S' stands for and where it came from in this version of Superman (whatever his actual age may be).
ReplyDeleteThey've been trying to sell us on the whole "Kryptonian glyph" thing for a while now, and also saying that it "stands for 'Hope'", but I've never really believed that and have always chosen to believe that Ma Kent sewed his costume together and put a big red 'S' on it just so that everybody knows at a glance that he *is* "Superman" (The 'S' stands for "Hope"? Why not "Hopeman" then? Utter silliness, imo).
Either way, where does he get that 'S' in this reality? Because it sure doesn't look anything like the "kryptonian glyph"-thing that supposedly accompanied him in his ship as he came to earth *from* Krypton (and which also is supposed to represent his family herald-symbol-crest-type thing? I dunno, that's also just as dumb, imho).