A Marvel Tale You Won't Believe

Just before the dawn of the Marvel superheroes, Stan Lee often provided variations on this theme: the monster or alien or ghost or Abominable Snowman turns out to be the protagonist or the victim or the investigator or, for all I know, the reader himself. EC Comics and the Twilight Zone TV show also used the trick. The predictability of the twist did little to detract from the enjoyment of the tale in the hands of artists like Jack Kirby or, here, Steve Ditko. This one’s from Amazing Adult Fantasy 7 (1961).

The Sting of the Sandman

When we later Baby Boomers first met the Justice Society of America in Flash 123 (Sept. 1961), Flash 129 (June 1962) and Flash 137 (June 1963), and then again in Justice League of America 21 and 22 (Aug.-Sept 1963), we undoubtedly thought we’d hit the jackpot. Our roster of superheroes had doubled instantly!

We swiftly sorted these intriguing “older newcomers” into the variations-on-a-theme heroes (Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Atom, Wonder Woman, Batman and Superman) and the unique heroes (Hourman, Dr. Fate, the Spectre, Dr. Mid-Nite, the Sandman, and others).

Created by writer Gardner Fox and artist Bert Christman for Adventure Comics 40 (July 1939), the Sandman drew on inspirations that predated the smash-hit heroes Superman and Batman. Wealthy Wesley Dodds wore a gas mask, fedora and stylized, caped business suit, wielded a gas gun to kayo criminals and was pursued by police as a criminal. One ancestor was obvious: the dramatic radio hero Green Hornet, who had premiered in 1936 (who was himself inspired by his great-uncle, the Lone Ranger, a radio hero who’d bowed in 1933).

The Sandman was “Batmaned-up” with yellow-and-purple tights and a boy sidekick in Adventure Comics 69 (Dec. 1941). But his distinctive pulp hero look was restored, thankfully, during his 1960s JLA revival.

Where to Take Refuge

The Persistent Problem of Fate

I found DC’s 1940s’ superhero Dr. Fate fascinating when I met him crossing from a parallel world in Justice League of America 21 and 22 (1963) and then teaming with his Justice Society comrade Hourman in Showcase 55 and 56 (1965). The beautiful blue and yellow costume, that mysterious helmet masking his features, those vast magical powers — evocative stuff that dreams are made of.

But that last point suggests a problem that Dr. Fate shares with Dr. Strange and other superhero magicians going back at least to Chandu on radio in 1931. Ill-defined powers can seem to be unlimited, and your story has no suspense if the hero can always pull some deus ex machina spell out of his ass to save the day.

Lee Falk’s superhero magician Mandrake had that problem when the newspaper comic strip began in 1934 — he could, with a gesture, teleport himself anywhere or halt a man plunging to his death. But Falk spotted the problem, and limited Mandrake’s powers to super-hypnotism. His gestures could now instantly control what people believed they saw, but not physical reality.

Dining with Charles Laughton on the Train

Charles Laughton

Charles Laughton’s widow, actress Elsa Lanchester, recalled that he had a couple of telling experiences on cross-country trains.

“Once, when Charles was traveling across the United States on the Super Chief in the late thirties, he sat in the dining car opposite a couple,” she wrote. “They were a nice, middle-aged, middle-class husband and wife, and Charles got into a conversation with them. The husband explained that he was in the wholesale dolls-underwear business.

“‘And you’re a famous actor, aren’t you?’ he asked.

“’Yes.’

His wife piped up, ‘But what do you do in real life, Mr. Laughton?’”

Lanchester wrote, “Charles was a moral man who was shocked by himself, so that he suffered the painful guilts of a highly moral individual. He could laugh at moral contradictions in others, but he couldn’t laugh at the paradoxes in himself. But he could roar with laughter when he told this story:

“On another of his trips across the country, talking to a couple in the dining car, Charles asked if they went to the theatre much in New York.

“ ‘No, we don’t go to plays nowadays,’ the husband answered. ‘We don’t approve of the immoral language.’

“Charles inquired, ‘May I ask, what is your work, your profession?’

“ ‘Oh,’ answered his wife, ‘my husband is in atomic research.’”

Steve Ditko's Titans: Destructive and Lovable

I think children are attracted to giant monsters for the same reason they are attracted to superheroes — because small people find it easy to imagine how nice it would be to be much bigger, more colorful and more powerful than all those bossy grown-ups who surround them, eternally barking their strange orders.

But although superheroes essentially founded and sustained the comic book industry, ongoing giant monster characters are pretty much a movie genre. Two of the exceptions were created for Charlton Comics by the great Steve Ditko  — the giant ape Konga (1960-1965) and the amphibious dinosaur Gorgo (1961-1965).

Each ran 23 issues, plus specials — a relatively long run, considering. Loving them both as a child, I didn’t consider how difficult it must have been to write stories for characters who cannot talk and, because of their Brobdingnagian stature, virtually cannot even interact with human beings. Writing tales for Rex the Wonder Dog or the Lone Ranger’s horse Silver must have been a breeze by comparison.

Konga was based on a relatively bad film of the same name, notable for starring Batman butler Michael Gough (it wasn’t his fault). The murderous Konga of the movies was killed off in the first issue, replaced in the rest of the run by a namesake sweet monkey amplified into a sweet but nevertheless formidable giant ape.

Gorgo was based on a relatively good film of the same name, with a plot that lent itself to a sustained comic book series. Gorgo was a giant aquatic reptile captured, like King Kong, for exhibition. What his captors didn’t know was that he was only a child, and that his truly titanic mommy — as big as Big Ben, and therefore 300 feet high — would let nothing stop her in her attempt to rescue him. This was one of those rare giant monsters movies with a happy ending in which the monsters won.

Gorgo was a touching tale of mother love, like Stella Dallas, and Konga was the poignant saga of a lost boy, like Pinocchio. No wonder they worked so well.

When the Right Hated Lucy: The Red Hair Scare

At 24, Lucille Ball had signed a Communist Party membership card to please her socialist grandfather, Fred Hunt. Unknowingly, she had also signed on for a nightmare.

The I Love Lucy show aired during the McCarthy era, and in 1953 ruthless right wingers were determined to use the “scandal” to destroy the show and its star. It took all of Desi Arnaz’s PR wiles to quell the storm. He joked that “The only thing red about Lucy is her hair, and even that isn’t legitimate.”

In Ball of Fire: The Tumultuous Life and Comic Art of Lucille Ball, Stefan Kanfer wrote, “Lucy and Desi made no more public statements, going about their business as if nothing had happened, resentful of fair-weather friends and acquaintances who made themselves scarce, and grateful to the handful who went out of their way to express their support. First to pay a call was comedian Lou Costello. Lucy thought of him as an acquaintance more than a pal; she had only been on his radio show a few times. But there he was sitting in the garden, and when Lucy asked him why he was in evidence, Costello replied: ‘You just go about your business. I’m just hanging out here for the day. I thought you might need a friend about now.’ Jack Oakie, Lucy’s costar in the old days, showed up; so did Lionel Barrymore, crippled by arthritis, who visited in a wheelchair.”

A force more powerful than even the House Un-American Activities Committee finally vaporized the storm clouds entirely, and that was the Nielsen and Trendex overnight ratings. I Love Lucy was still the number one show, and a Los Angeles Times headline cheered: “Everybody Still Loves Lucy.” President Eisenhower invited the couple to the White House, and all was well.

But not with Lucy, not entirely. “She could never quite relax after her experience with the congressmen and the fallout that came from their investigation,” Kanfer wrote. “A signature on an old piece of paper had been enough to justify her most pathological fears: one’s livelihood and social position could indeed vanish overnight, and in the end (not) money nor love nor public relations would be powerful enough to keep the jackals away.”