Legion World Forums LEGION COMPANION Dr. Gym'll's Cultural Rarities Their Final Golden Age Appearances... A Retro Review Thread!

EDE, I've seen a few panels from Rex the Wonder Dog stories, and they look decent. Of course, it doesn't hurt that they were drawn by Alex Toth and Gil Kane -- the former had really come into his own by then, and the latter was on the verge of finding his unique style.

I was reading that the later issues lean heavily into sci fi, with Rex visiting subatomic worlds and such, and so it also has a lot of thematic connection to Gil Kane's later work on The Atom.

Green Lantern, Part 2

Final Golden Age Solo Appearance, Green Lantern #38, October 1949

2nd Solo Story, "The Impossible Mr. Paradox"


This story begins at the office of WXYZ, where Alan Scott is discussing with Doiby Dickles the fact that the president of the radion station, Mr. Mears, wants to cancel one of their radio programs featuring Clay Chalmers, the Paradox Man. Hoping to save the program, Alan invites rich manufacturer C. K. Nevins to the next taping of the show, hoping he'll sponsor it. The show basically consists of Chalmers presenting riddles, brainteasers, and paradoxes to the audience. The night in question Chalmers is presenting Zeno's Achilles and the Tortoise paradox, which they they spend basically a whole page explaining. I like to imagine that at least some kids were inspired by this to actually study the mathematics of infinity and convergent series and weren't convinced by the goofy editor's note that the paradox fails to take into account the idea of rate of speed, which doesn't really solve it at all. Anyway, Nevins isn't impressed enough to sponsor the show. Chalmers is devastated by the news, and despondently claims that there is only one thing left for a failure like him to do now. Worried, Alan asks Doiby to follow Chalmers, but he loses him near Nevins manufacturing plant. Worried that perhaps Chalmers planned to get revenge, Doiby investigates the plant, only to find everyone in a trance, but they are asleep with their eyes open! "Dis is impossible!" exclaims Doiby. "Impossible-- but true!" responds a strangely dessed fellow calling himself "Mr. Paradox"! This vile villain and his gang are in the process of robbing the vault, and they capture Doiby and tie him up in his cab. Fortunately, Doiby is able to activate Goitrude's "rocket signal" to alert the Green Lantern! Seeing the splotch of green in the sky that serves as the Green Lantern signal, Alan quickly switches clothes and charges his ring at the ancient lantern using his sacred oath (which is notably the one that would later be used by Hal Jordan, rather than the older one that most people would associate with Alan Scott). Arriving at the scene, GL confronts Mr. Paradox, who responds with the genius strategy of running away! But even though GL is flying and should be able to catch Mr. Paradox easily, he isn't able to, and the villain gets away! Doiby proclaims "Mr. Pair-o-ducks" to be a tricky character, and when GL hears the name of the villain and Doiby's story of losing track of Chalmers shortly before the villain shows up, GL is worried that the villain might be the troubled radio show host.

Gl and Doiby return to the radio station to find Chalmers's address, and heading there, find Mr. Paradox and his gang there, and proceed to confront them! GL easily dispatches the ordinary crooks, but gas from Mr. Paradox's wand knocks him out. Rather than just shooting them like one of his thugs suggests, Mr. Paradox decides to create an elaborate paradoxical death trap so that the fates of GL and Doiby can serve as a lesson to all those who might challenge him in the future! Imprisoning them in glass balls suspended floating above some water fountains (which the editor explains is possible because of air pressure), while a machine gun is set to automatically start firing at the heroes while Mr. Paradox and his men make their getaway. Fortunately, while GL's physically weak from the gas, his willpower is still strong, and he is able to use his ring to free himself and Doiby. Noticing Mr. Paradox's tracks lead in the direction of the Gotham freight yard, GL and Doiby are once again in pursuit! There they once again find Mr. Paradox robbing a freight car that belongs to C. K. Nevins. Mr. Paradox proclaims their presence there is "impossible", to which GL responds, "But true!" Mr. Paradox says that he is not beaten yet and begins rotating his jeweled wand! But GL responds by closing his eyes, thus making himself immune to Mr. Paradox's hypnosis, which was what was behind all of his tricks. Unmasking the villain, GL reveals him to be not Chalmers, but Nevins himself, whom GL had suspected as the only person who would actually know the arrival time of the precious metal shipments Mr. Paradox was stealing. It turns out this whole thing was an insurance scam, whereby Nevins would steal goods from himself and collect the insurance as well. Nevins had taken inspiration from Chalmers and decided to throw suspicion on the failed radio host (which seems like it would've taken much more time than he had available, but whatever). Soon, Alan and Doiby receive a letter from Chalmers, who fortunately hadn't committed suicide or anything while they were busy suspecting him of being a super-villain but had simply taken the desperate action of returning home to Indiana!

I liked this story a lot. Looking through synopses of the later Green Lantern stories, they really seemed to be pushing to come up with interesting super-villains for GL to battle. The Red Domino, White Star, the Fool, and the recurring Knodar, criminal from the future. You can definitely see a lot of continuity between what John Broome and Julie Schwartz were doing in a story like this and some of what they'd be doing a decade later with the Hal Jordan version of the character. I believe this may be Doiby Dickles final Golden Age appearance?

Next up: But, wait... there's more! Special bonus GA GL content!

Green Lantern Extra!

Golden Age Story Not Published Until the Silver Age: from Green Lantern, Vol. 2, #88

"The Menace of the Marching Toys"

So while GL's GA solo series ended with #38, a script for a story intended for publication in #39 was published in the early Bronze Age! It has artwork by Infantino and Sachs, which definitely gives it a bit of a different feel from Irwin Hansen's GA artwork, though it's less jarring than I would have expected.

We do, however, get a bit of artistic weirdness on the first page of the story, where Alan Scott's secretary, who should be Molly Mayne at this point, is both drawn and colored to look a lot more like his pre-war secretary, Irene Miller. I wonder if there's an issue regarding references? Anyway, she's greeting two young lads who have written prize essays on the topic of tolerance (very much a late 40s theme!), and they are there to meet Green Lantern, who will be taking them to the circus. They also receive two special statues of GL by master toymaker Eric Knowles. So GL flies them to the circus, where they get to see a really funny clown, before a bunch of giant toys led by a tin soldier show up and start robbing people. GL swoops into action and starts mopping up the toys, until the Tin Soldier hits him with a giant yo-yo! The Tin Soldier gets away with some of the loot, but even though they have seen him fail, the two boys still have confidence that GL will make short work of the Tin Soldier once he catches up to him again. So, the next night Alan broadcasts a story that the Tin Soldier has struck again, this time at Miffany's jewelry store, but mentions that that a rare emerald owned by Genghis Khan, the prize jewel of the store's collection, was overlooked in the robbery! This is, however, a plant to lure the Tin Soldier into a trap. The Tin Soldier takes the bait but spots the trap as his toy minions break into the store, and then detonates his toy soldiers to provide a distraction while he escapes. GL is able to save one of the toy soldiers, who turn out to be robots, and figures out that the Tin Soldier is controlling them by remote radio waves. Using his radio engineering expertise, GL is able to trace the signal from the robots to their source. Unfortunately, he didn't count on the Tin Soldier having a giant jack-in-the-box shaped like a fist, which leads to his being tied up to a deadly giant spinning top death trap. I'm guessing John Broome was really disappointed that he didn't actually get to use this scene in the Golden Age, and thus created the Flash villain The Top just to get the opportunity to do so. Anyway, GL escapes by bouncing power ring beams off mirrors. GL rushes again to capture the Tin Soldier, who has one final trick up his sleeve, as his robot try to hold GL in place while a giant piece of metal machinery crashes down on him, but a quick power beam projected hand stops that from being a problem. And so GL captures the Tin Soldier who turns out to be Eric Knowles. And so, before taking Knowles to the police, he takes him to the window of the bedroom where the two contest winners are having a sleepover. GL shows them that he has successfully captured the criminal, vindicating their faith in him, and also helping them to learn the valuable lesson that any toymaker who gives out lame statuettes as prizes instead of fully articulable action figures is not to be trusted!

So, this was a respectable story. The fact that the villain using giant toys to commit crimes turns out to be the toymaker randomly introduced at the beginning of the story is a bit obvious compared to the Mister Parados story's deliberate throwing of suspciou on the innocent red herring. It kinds of suffers from that annoying plot device where the hero repeatedly almost captures the villain, only to be stopped by some trick/trap of the villain until the story runs out of pages and so they have to successfully catch the crook. The entusiasm of the two contest winners for their hero Green Lantern is pretty endearing, though! I hope they continued to be best friends and continued to fight for tolerance as civil rights lawyers or something when they grew up!

Sargon the Sorceror

Final Golden Age Appearance: Green Lantern #37, April 1949

"The Secret of 13!"

So, Sargon the Sorceror had debuted in All-American in late 1941, where he spent a couple of years before switching over to Sensation Comics for about another four years or so, but, for some reason, his final story just kind of randomly appears in the penultimate issue of Green Lantern.

This story begins with Sargon, in full costume weirdly enough, on his way home from a fishing trip, when he decides to stop at a roadhouse. He decides to play a song on the jukebox, and he asks the bartender for a recommendation. The bartender sugests #13, which no one has played yet, and Sargon decides to try it out. Suddenly a voice comes over the record demanding that the patrons leave all of their valuables on their tables, or else! Everyone assumes it's a gag, until the shooting begins! So the patrons comply with the record, and then flee the roadhouse, all except for Sargon and the bartender. Sargon asks the bartender what the deal is with the record he'd suggested be played, he the bartender tells him some guys had installed the jukebox that afternoon, and, hey, it's those guys that are coming in from the rear of the restaurant now! The crooks decide to plub Sargon and the bartender, but a little magic thwarts their plans! But one of the baddies that Sargon has left hanging upside down from the ceiling manages to sock him. But instead of just shooting him now, they decide to get rid of Sargon and the bartender by tying them to a reindeer statue outside the roadhouse to which they attach wheels and send it rolling down the road towards a lot full of bulls.

Then we switch to a scene at an indoor skating rink, where two teens are about to play #13 on a newly installed jukebox, but just as the crooks from before rush into to pull their crime again, Sargon emerges from the jukebox and defeats the bad guys by creating men made of ice to subdue them, and otherwise using the ice against them. It turns out he had woken up in time to change the reindeer statue into a real flying reindeer to save himself and the bartender from crashing into the bull lot. And we are told that we can read about the magical adventures of Sargon every month in Sensation Comics, except we can't, because he'd already stopped appearing in Sensation a few months before.

I've never read any GA Sargon before, but this story was pretty weak overall. He'd next show up as a villain on Earth-1, which is eventually explained as due to the corrupting influence of another shard of the Ruby of Life, and would later aid the JLA a couple of times before being killed off around the time of Crisis. He had a comic sidekick for awhile, Maximillian O'Leary, who doesn't appear in this issue and I don't believe has made any appearances since the Golden Age.

I love the basic idea of a Ruby of Life and that most of his 'magic' is using the stone to animate inanimate objects (and have designed and played a character based on him for a superhero RPG, just using an animation power with a magical power source, rather than 'magic'), but in the comics he quickly degenerates into just doing whatever the plot calls for, like most characters with 'magic' as a super-power, which is boring to me.

Sadly his most distinctive comic appearance that I can remember is his death in Swamp Thing. "You are scaring my daughter. Die like a sorcerer." Wow!

He's definitely wasted going after ordinary crooks with overly elaborate robbery schemes. Which, unfortunately, seems to be most of his stories based on a quick scan of their plots.

His major recurring foe is the villainess Blue Lama, Though I'm actually more intrigued by one-off foe Lightning Bug.

Interesting that his 'rogues gallery,' such as it is, includes multiple women. Heroes seem to have a lot more villains of the same gender, making the rare woman villain for Superman or Batman an outlier (and, in Batman's case, a potential romantic partner, like Talia al-Ghul or Catwoman...).

Perhaps something to do with Sargon not being the standard two-fisted adventurer from that era who pops people in the jaw (since dudes punching ladies, even if they are super-crooks, is a bit 'yikes'), but a magical type who wraps them up in an animated carpet or something.

Dr. Mid-Nite Extra!

Golden Age Story not published until much later: from Adventure Comics #418

"The Sight-Steelers"

Since I did this with Green Lantern, I suppose I should take a look at one more Dr. Mid-Nite story that was intended for publication in All-American #103 but didn't actually see print until the 1970s. Both story and art were complete for this one, and it only needed inking, for which enter Sam Amendola, whom the editor notes was born in the 1948, the same year the story was written.

We begin with Charles McNider phoning philanthropist Mr. Lacey about his new invention, an "echo-flashlight" that will allow blind people to navigate by means of echolocation. Walking to Lacey's place, Dr. McNider encounters a man up a telephone pole, who reveals that he had tapped his phone and listened in on his call to Lacey. As more mobsters make the scene, Dr. McNider trips and falls into the bushes! From the bushes emerges Dr. Mid-Nite! Fisticuffs ensue, and Dr. Mid-Nite has basically won when Murvis, the gang's leader, shows up on a Penny Farthing and takes the good doctor out. Murvis is the secretary of Dr. Lacey, who is also a collector of antique wheeled devices, whcih explains the Penny Farthing. I totally missed this the first time through the story, so it was kind of weird. Anyway, they tie Dr. Mid-Nite to the Penny Farthing and send him rolling down a dangerous incline! Fortunately, they didn't search him, or they would've found the echo-flashlight which they just assumed Dr. McNider had taken with him when he "left". So, despite being tied on backwards, Dr. Mid-Nite is able to use his feet to steer the Penny Farthing using the echo-flashlight to navigate where he's going! The gangsters rob Mr. Lacey's antique exhibition, but Dr. Mid-Nite shows up riding a horse-drawn chariot. He slashes the gangster's tires, Ben-Hur style, but gets oil splattered all over his goggles! So, it's the echo-flashlight to the rescue again, as Doc Mid-Nite uses it to tell where the gangsters are in the subsequent fight. We end on Dr. McNIder giving a lecture about his new invention to the crowd at the exhibition.

This story follows a very similar pattern to his actual published final appearance, but I actually liked it quite a bit better. It feels like it was a bit constrained by the limited page count, so you get things like what must have been an extremely quick costume change in the bushes, but overall, it's pretty good. I'm a little iffy on the practicality of the echo-flashlight (but, hey, it's comics!), but I absolutely love the idea that Dr. McNider is actively working on ways to help improve the lives of blind people, and that there are all these inventions for the blind on Earth-2 that don't exist on other Earths because of his presence there.

Yeah, one of my favorite things about both McNider and his modern-day legacy successor (I'm embarrassed to say I forgot his name) is how they try to help others not just by fighting crime but also by trying to better the lives of innocent civilians through their scientific talents.

Sounds like a fun story. The Echo-Flashlight reminds me of how some blind people do actually use echo-location quite successfully to find walls, doors, and other objects. I was quite impressed when I watched this video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08smCjKWNL0