February 1963: Cryll, the Alien Wonder

When the situation looked particularly dire, DC’s “spaceman/Batman,” Space Ranger, had two deus ex machina he could always rely on. 

They were roughly analogous to a utility belt and a Boy Wonder.

One was his ray gun, a device that the term “versatile” doesn’t do justice, firing a Thermoblaze ray, a Vacuumizer, Numb Rings, a Sonifier, Asborb-Discs, etc. It proved as handy as Space Ghost’s later power bands.

And when that failed him, Space Ranger could always count on being bailed out by his little pink sidekick, the rotund, trunk-snouted alien Cryll.

“Cryll, who could transform himself into any animal (like the Doom Patrol's Beast Boy, but with the added advantage of being able to use alien fauna with exotic abilities), was a valuable ally,” noted comics historian Don Markstein.

In Cryll's Deadly Double! (Tales of the Unexpected 75, Feb.-March 1963), artist Bob Brown and writer Arnold Drake finally gave readers an origin for Cryll while introducing us to his evil opposite number, Drexyll.

We learned that a teleportation experiment gone wrong had propelled Cryll into space, and that the criminal Drexyll had later managed to duplicate it to escape capture.

After defeating Drexyll in a Sword in the Stone-type battle of transformations and dispatching him home, Cryll says, “It's fortunate that the teleportation process can only be used for brief periods each year! I couldn’t stand another battle like that! I’m pooped!”

“Easygoing, good for a laugh, and looking for all the world like one of those squeezable stress dolls, Cryll was Space Ranger’s loyal companion from their first published adventure,” noted Jon Morris in his book The League of Regrettable Sidekicks. 

“ ‘It was certainly my lucky day when you found me, stranded far out in the deeps of space beyond Pluto,’ Cryll recalls in a flashback, and the reader is treated to the sight of Space Ranger carrying in both hands what appears to be a ham frozen in a block of ice.”