Thursday, May 23, 2013

Strange Things Are Afoot--er, "Ahand"--in Smallville!!

Presenting the long-lost, long-forgotten Superboy/Bruce Lee team-up:

 Oh, I thought it said Fists Of Fury. Never mind.

Wait a minute, never mind the never mind--that's wacky even for the Silver Age!! What gives?

Well, Superboy is off to stop a runaway missile, because, well, Smallville, when...



Well, that was interesting. And later that day...



Well, there is an explanation--of sorts--for these events. But you might want to be sitting down,,,

OK,,,

What...? "Duplicate my exposed arm three times, but in 'evil' human forms"?!?!? WTF?!?!?!

OK, if any of that made sense to you, your clearly in need of professional health.

But the good news is, that was the least silly of the three stories in Superboy #131 (1966). Really.

Silver Age...don't operate heavy machinery under its influence...

7 comments:

Bill said...

Very nice, but let's get to the Krypto story!

ERIC! said...

Yeah! I got to see them Dog Legionnaires!

SallyP said...

I...whut?

snell said...

Rest assured, Krypto is coming next week...

Mr. Whiskas said...

That magnet doesn't look anywhere near his face...

Smurfswacker said...

Re-reading these stories after 35 year I am amazed by the extent to which the dialogue explains and re-explains everything in the drawings. "A disembodied arm popped out of thin air...its fist is clobbering me!" "Now there are three super-powerful fists belting me!" This was a very DC way of telling stories. Schwartz's Flash and Green Lantern stories were also thick with expository dialogue.

Not that Marvel didn't do the same thing sometimes ("By deflecting your ray with my shield I'm knocking your armed henchmen overboard!"). Writer didn't trust the artist to draw an understandable panel? Editor didn't trust the reader to figure things out just by looking at a picture?

Mr. Whiskas said...

"Editor didn't trust the reader to figure things out just by looking at a picture?"

Well, when you have stories about "super powered human arms" being created because Superboy's arm was exposed to red K and he had a magnet and so they materialize every know and then and...well, when you have such stories I can see why they may have thought you couldn't at least try to explain it enough...