Sunday, December 22, 2013

Tales From The Quarter Bin--Wander!!

Listen up, cowpokes...yer about to hear about the oddest consarned owlhoot ever to roam the Wild West:

Who, you may be asking? Well, let the very poorly written caption tell you:

Wait, what?

Wander (real name: WNNDWAR) is an intergalactic salesman from Sirius V (or Sirius 5, depending on who's scripting) who gets stranded on Earth in the Old West!

And why does he talk that way? Well, Sirians first visited Earth in the days of Shakespeare, so that's how they learned their English!

I should be noted that the quality of his "Olde Englishe" varied wildly from issue to issue...

Wander ended up with a traveling medicine show, with W. C. Fields "Professor" Phineas T. Bloat and grizzled prospector Gabby Hayes Jeb Dooley. Hijinks ensued...


See? High hilarity!!

Oh, but let's not forget space science!! Wander has a magic scientific whip!


Magnotryolic? In other stories it was atomic, or positronic, or ionic, or whatever other science word they could come up with that month...

And of course, cue the sad David Banner music at the end of each issue...


Now, if you travel back to Wander's origins, you will be stunned to see that he was created by Denny O'Neill (under his frequent Charlton pen-name Sergius O'Shaugnessy) and Jim Aparo!!

Early on, he was stronger than we mere humans, although that was mostly forgotten later...

And he would occasionally strip down to his space suit (apparently lost at the dry cleaners by later issues...)


Ye-haw!!!

Wander, well, wandered the West as a back-up in The Cheyenne Kid #66-87 (1968-1971).

I'm not sure where the rights to this fella ended up--I've never been clear if DC ended up with everything Charlton, or just the heroes. But admit it--you want to see a story with this guy and Jonah Hex, right?

Today's panels were taken from the Cheyenne Kid # 83 (1971) and #68 (1968)

2 comments:

SallyP said...

I have never even heard of this...and yet...I have to admit to being intrigued.

Bill said...

Sergius O'Shaugnessy is the name of the hero in Norman Mailer's "The Deer Park".