Tales From the Golden Age of Comics!

It's another new feature here at Castle Vardulon! Check out the video below in which I take viewers on a journey through one of my favorite Golden Age Comic Stories!

The Hundred-Eighty-Seventh Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Dear writers/artists from 70 years ago - if you're having Dollman fighting animatronic miniatures, then you're not fully realizing the visual potential of having a tiny superpowered crimefighter. This is the visual equivalent of having him trapped in a tiny prison dollhouse.

What? That happened in the same issue?

Oh.

The Hundred-Eighty-Sixth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

I want to live in a world where a sloop will roll up on a trawler and demand a ransom of fish.

The Hundred-Eighty-Fifth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

See, that's what separates heroes from the rest of us - reflexes. The guy hasn't even finished plummeting from the top of the lighthouse, and Midnight (the fake Spirit!) is already looking for a villain.

The Hundred-Eighty-Fourth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

I'm not sure how effective a trap can be if you can clearly see it from the other side of the doorway/portal/hole.

The Hundred-Eighty-Third Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Is that a rocketboy punching some hillbillies, including a backwoods witch? Yes, it absolutely is. Thank you, the 1940s.

The Hundred-Eighty-Second Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

First off, that's a long reach for a pun, secondly, I have no idea why she's holding up that case. That slip is no more scandalous than her normal dresses.

The Hundred-Eighty-First Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

Was this written by a time-traveler? Is this something they said in America? In the 40s?

The Hundred-Eightieth Greatest Panel in the History of Comics

I resolve to start saying 'Crossed Myself Up' every time I make a mistake. Is it a little late for a New Year's Resolution? Absolutely - but not the Pagan New Year, and who needs self-improvement more than the Pagans?

Merry Christmas, everyone!

I'm just going to go ahead and assume that everyone's been good this year, and therefore you deserve your gift - the greatest comic book story ever told! That may sound like hyperbole, and it's possible that I'm just biased towards the story, as it features both my favourite Golden-Age Hero (Zero, the Ghost Detective!) and a villain so spectacular that it must be seen to be believed! So, with no further ado, I give you, from the pages of Feature Comics #71, dated September, 1943 :

If necessary, all images can be bigified through clickery.

You know what's super-comforting? That there are a host of other ghost detectives out there equal in skill to Zero. After all, were he 'peerless' among ghost detectives, then if something bad were to happen to him, it could be disastrous for the whole world! Since he's just on par with all the other Ghost Detectives, however, there's plenty of backup available were things to take a left turn.

I Think Doll Man Went A Little Far This Time

 

I know that, as a rule, Golden Age superheroes were incredibly hardcore compared to the pantywaists who claim the title today - Batman casually shot people or tossed them off roofs, Superman drowned people in the ocean or forced them off the road - but even considering that, Doll Man's actions in this story may cross a line of decency. So, without too much further ago, I'll present, from Doll Man Quarterly - Issue 6 (Summer, 1943).

No, it isn't a story about an artist with a terrible grasp of perspective, but you'll be forgiven for thinking so.

Our tale begins when Darrel Dane and his fiancee, Martha, are driving through the woods. They come across an exhausted man telling bizarre tales of 'Little Green Men'. Naturally they dismiss it as the ramblings of a shock victim - little do they know that off in the woods the madman responsible for said 'little green men' is crafting a scheme to kill all possible witnesses!

A fairly run-of-the-mill mad scientist, this unnamed bald man has a stereotypically unfeasible plan. He seals people inside of a glass cylinder, then exposes them to a mysterious gas which transforms them into green pygmies. His endgame?

You know, until you come up with a way where this doesn't have to be done one person at a time, that's just not going to work out. Hell, in the five minutes it takes you to create one pygmy something like a thousand new people are born.

To his credit, the doctor has a failsafe planned:

That's right, he's working on a way to reverse the process. I only bring that up because it's going to be important a little later on.

The Doctor sends his green men to lure Martha (how he discovers who she is and where she lives goes unexplained) into the woods where she can be abducted. They do this by dropping off a letter:

Even though this can only be a trap, she drives off into the woods, where she's grabbed by the mad doctor. Darrel finds the note and tracks her down, then follows her tracks through the woods, where he's grabbed by the lilliputians!

Of course, the green men didn't realize they were dealing with a man capable of shrinking, so the moment they've abandoned him to his captivity, Darrel slips out of his bonds and covers himself in green dust, hoping to blend in among the other green men. This works surprisingly well, despite the fact that he's the only one of them wearing a unitard and cape:

Also, he has hair.

Doll Man viciously beats up the doctor, and then, in his first questionable choice of this issue, pulls Martha out of the conversion chamber and tosses the semi-conscious doctor in, so that he'll be transformed into a mute pygmy! Then it's simply a matter of rescuing Martha from an upsetting scene of pygmy bondage:

Then he beats up his fellow tiny people, and makes a frankly shocking announcement.

Really? What are you basing this on, Darrel? You found out about this shrinkification process literally two minutes ago - you didn't question the doctor about it, or search for his notes - for all you know, there's a simple method of reversing the disorder.

While it's true that there's no known cure for this condition (Doc was still working on it himself, not that you'd know that), as a scientist who invented a serum that allows you to shrink and grow at will (not to mention retain your full-size strength and fly), wouldn't you be the best possible person to work on that cure?

Well, it seems that Darrel isn't especially interested in 'helping' people he's not engaged to, so after moving Martha to safety, Darrel uses his scientific acumen to whip up some TNT!

With the doctor and his still-living victims all trapped in the lab and the dynamite set to detonate, there's just one more step to Darrel's plan-

Making sure escape is impossible!

With the case wrapped up and the day saved, Darrel takes a little time to gloat over his unique perspective on the events that have captivated the press.

Darrel Dane: Murdering helpless criminals, putting innocent victims out of their misery, and then never telling anyone about it. Not actions that we've been taught to associate with heroism - but hey, it was the 40s - maybe we're in the wrong this time?

Although the sinister framing in the final panel would tend to suggest that no, Doll Man's the bad guy around here.

Phantom Lady Doesn't Wear a Disguise of Any Kind

Clark Kent's glasses have always been the subject of merriment - could anyone really mistake Superman for a mild-mannered reporter with nothing more than a change of hairstyle, body language, voice, and eyewear?

Actually, you put all that together, and yeah, they probably could. I mean, really, just look at Christopher Reeve's portrayal-

But hey, I'm not here to talk about Superman, I'm here to discuss Phantom Lady, the superhero who put the least amount of effort into guarding her secret identity.

This is Phantom Lady! Her weapon? A flashlight that shines a cone of darkness! Yeah, there's a reason that you likely haven't heard of that particular facet of the character. You may have noticed that, even after stripping down to a scandalously-cut leotard and donning a cape, she wears no mask of any kind. She doesn't even put on a wig, Black Canary-style.

The Downside of the 'Marvel Method'

Now that's a misleading title if I've ever written one! I'm not actually talking about Marvel here, just their common method of making comics, which involved a brainstorming session where the story was devised, which the artist then drew on their own, with dialogue and specific plot details being added later.

That's the only explanation I can possibly find for the following panel:

Yes, it's a story about a mad scientist attempting to behead Fake Albert Einstein, but accidentally killing his assistant instead. Now, let's take a closer look at the body on that slab, with some crude notations by yours truly.

Point A - His left hand. Which means-

Point B - Can only be his left shoulder. Making that lump at-

Point C - His head.

So was the artist really not thinking this one through, or simply uninformed? Also, considering that this particular story was credited to a single writer/artist (Vernon Henkel), what does that say about the behind-the-scenes politics at Quality Comics?

I'd investigate further, but everyone who was there is almost certainly dead by now. I mean, really, it's been seventy years.

The Thirty-Seventh-Greatest Panel in the History of Comics!

Like Spider-Man after him, Tor's day-job is 'newspaper photographer'. Unlike Spider-Man, however, Tor focuses mostly on photographing the gruesome aftermaths of fatal crashes that he himself caused.

The Thirty-Sixth-Greatest Panel in the History of Comics!

...Cancer!

The Thirty-Fifth-Greatest Panel in the History of Comics!

So thoughtful of that guy to stop the fight just long enough to explain the plot. And then immediately start it back up again.

The Thirty-Fourth-Greatest Panel in the History of Comics!

This isn't a superhero torturing a criminal for information - which is a pretty common sight in the golden age, truth be told - it's a superhero taking a criminal to the police, then offering them advice on the best way to torture him for information.

Join us next time for more adventures of The Clock - Enhanced Interrogation Consultant!

The Mystery of Grape Nuts Solved - At Last!

As someone raised in North America in the 1980s, I was around for the resurgence of Grape Nuts cereal marketing, and the attendant increase in stand-up comedians' jokes about same. “It's not made of grapes, it's not made of nuts... what is it!?” As a child I'm sure I just accepted these jokes at face value, understood the nature of Grape Nuts as being one of life's little mysteries, and then moved on to watching another episode of Gummi Bears.

It wasn't until this year that I, quite accidentally, discovered the explanation for this enduring puzzle. Handily enough, it was in one of the comics I was reading to look for stories about Captain Marvel doing something spectacularly crazy or racist!

That's Volto, the man from Mars whose powers include promoting Post's new Grape Nuts Flakes - seeing this ad made me realize for the first time that Grape Nuts had been around long enough that my grandparents might have eaten them growing up - so I swung by Wikipedia to discover just how old they actually were. The answer - that they began production in the 1890s - was something of a shock, but immediately I was presented with the obvious answer to my query!

Seedless grapes, while extant, were not as common in America during the 19th century, so a worker in a cereal factory could well be expected to observe the visual similarity between this crushed grain:

and the seed (or nut) of a grape:

The stand-up comedians of the 80s, by comparison, grew up in an America completely devoid of both seeded grapes and simple electronic means of finding out why things are called things - so of course they were confused!

So there you have it, stand-up comedians of fifteen years ago - they're called that due to a physical resemblance between the cereal and the seeds of grapes.

You're welcome.

Next up? Finding out what, exactly, is up with airline peanuts, and why the bags are so hard to open.

The Thirty-Third-Greatest Panel in the History of Comics!

Dwarf vs Old Lady... who am I supposed to be rooting for here? Either one makes an effectively surprising Golden Age hero or villain...

The Thirty-Second-Greatest Panel in the History of Comics!

When I saw this panel my jaw dropped. So I thought that the experience should be shared with everyone.

Yikes.