February 1957: The League of Death-Cheaters

If Hollywood had turned Jack Kirby’s Challengers of the Unknown into a movie in the 1950s, they’d have had to hire Ray Harryhausen. And I doubt that even that stop motion wizard could have done Kirby’s visual spectacle full justice.

Outsized menaces were never much of a challenge for the Challengers. In the uncanny team’s first appearance in Showcase 6, they tackled something resembling Talos, the bronze giant who protected Crete in the story of Jason and the Argonauts (as recorded in the Argonautica by Apollonius of Rhodes). The Challengers could be seen as 20th century Argonauts.

“It was one of the last concepts (Jack Kirby) and Joe Simon thought up together: a team of daredevils who survived an airplane crash, then decided to take further risks because they were ‘living on borrowed time,’ noted comics historian Bill Schelly. “It was yet another S & K team book, but in keeping with the times and the still widely held perception that costumed characters were out, these heroes wore uniforms that resembled ‘normal’ clothes: identical purple shirts and slacks that weren’t skin tight.

Cleverly, the four were already heroes before the near-fatal crash that would unite them. That’s because they were flying to film a radio program called Heroes. So they were well prepared to repurpose their harrowing experiences into brave missions that would benefit humanity.

“Showcase 6 (Jan.-Feb. 1957) presented the origin story The Secret of the Sorcerer’s Box!, a book-length tale divided into four chapters,” Schelly wrote. “The book-length story, little-used at National at this time, was perhaps made more acceptable because the chapter divisions looked like separate stories to the casual browser.”

“Of the six bi-monthly issues of Showcase in 1957, three were devoted to Jack Kirby’s Challengers of the Unknown. Oddly, only one issue that year featured the return of the new Flash. Ever cautious, Irwin Donenfeld seemed to have wanted to make sure the good sales of Showcase 4 weren’t a fluke.”