Tales From The Quarter Bin--Shaloman!!

If you want to portray the adventures of the world's most powerful man, you have two choices.

You can spend hundreds of millions of dollars to make a broody, hyper-violent movie. Or you can make a cheap black & white comic that ends up in the Quarter Bin.

Which brings us to...

Who the what now?

Shaloman was created by, written, drawn, inked, lettered, and for all I know printed, stapled and hand delivered by Al Weisner in the mid 1980s. He felt that there weren't enough Jewish heroes, and set out to create a positive role model. And in the 80s indie comics boom, that's all it took--a dream and some blank paper.

In this issue, a terrorist is using laser weapons and advanced explosives to kill Israeli citizens and blow up military bases...

Wait...seriously?

Yes. You see, a lightning bolt carved a rock on top of Mount Israel into a shape resembling the Hebraic letter Shin. "Three wise men" used some magic hoodoo on it, so now, when a worthy cry of "Oi-Vay" reaches it, the rock transforms into the hero Shaloman!!

Damn, I love comics!!

Shaloman has the standard Superman power set: flight, strength, invulnerability, super-senses...but being a, well, rock, Shaloman doesn't have a secret identity, and avoids all those icky love triangles. Which leaves him lots of time for beating bad guys!

[SPOILER ALERT: Shaloman doesn't snap the guys neck]

Well, it turns that the true villain of the story is Mallin, an international arms dealer who sell high tech experimental weaponry to terrorists. Oh, and he's a Bond villain in his spare time, apparently. Check out his Ken Adams-inspired secret base:

More proof he's a moonlighting Bond villain? He's a German with an eye patch and an "iron hand":

Oh, yes, Shaloman makes quick work of those killer robots:

[Editor's note: OK, I guess that counts as neck-snapping...]

And when Mallin escapes and "overloads the atomic furnace" at his crib (see, I told you...total Bond villain), Shaloman contains the mushroom cloud:

Woo hoo!! Where were you during Chernobyl, big guy?

So, Mallin's operation smashed, the crisis contained, it's back "home" for Shaloman:

Back to being a stone. I'm guessing there wasn't ever a "Private Life Of Shaloman" back-up feature...

From Shaloman #2 (1989)