February 1966: Long Day's Journey to Nightman

A comic book company with a long history can afford to have a long memory.

DC Comics, for example, could publish a story in Action Comics in 1958, and then a sequel in World’s Finest at the end of the next decade.

The World’s Finest team of Superman, Batman and Robin spent a lot of time conning each other. Usually it was some hoax or ruse to protect one of the other members of the team from danger without their knowledge, but sometimes, as in World’s Finest 155 (Feb. 1966), it was just for fun.

On the anniversary of Superman and Batman’s 1,000^th case together, a new crimefighter appears who eclipses Batman in every way. Batman unravels the mystery with the logical (if immodest) deduction that the only masked crimefighter who could be as good as Batman would be Batman himself.

And yes, Superman had arranged the whole thing as a treat for Batman, using super-hypnosis to persuade Batman to adopt another identity that would be kept secret even from himself.

Superman is surprised to see Batman and “Nightman” appear together — a trick arranged by the Masked Manhunter using his old Batman robot.

“Once, for a birthday present, Batman dreamed up a puzzle that took all my powers to solve!” Superman explains. “To celebrate our 1000^th case together, I decided to return the favor … in spades!”

Superman was making a casual reference to The Super-Key to Fort Superman in Action Comics 241 (June 1958), a tale in which Batman hid out in the Fortress of Solitude in order to provide a birthday puzzle for the Man of Steel.

Interesting that writer Edmond Hamilton would be familiar with an old story by another writer, Jerry Coleman. The Super-Key to Fort Superman had been reprinted in the first Superman annual in 1960, however.

World’s Finest 155 went on sale in December 1965, just one month before Batman would be catapulted to the pinnacle of pop culture stardom.

June 1964: The Legion in Triplicate

Readers got a triple dose of the Legion of Superheroes in comics on newsstands in April 1964.

In their cover feature in Adventure Comics 321, the Legion proper wended their way through the usual suspicions and accusations of betrayal to thwart the scheme of the Time Trapper.

In Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen 77, the ginger-haired cub reporter used an enlarging potion to become a 20th century stand-in for Colossal Boy, costume and all, so that he could contain the threat of Titano the Super Ape. Titano’s kryptonite vision had rendered the Man of Tomorrow hors de combat.

And in World’s Finest 142, Superman, Batman and Robin faced a foe who possessed all the powers of 20 members of the Legion. They shouldn’t have been able to beat him — and they couldn’t!

“Readers learn that the Composite Superman is actually Joe Meach, a former high diver who, down his luck, attempted a publicity stunt dive which would have killed him were it not for a timely rescue by Superman,” Matthew Grossman noted. “Given a job as janitor at the Superman Museum, Meach is struck by a freak lightning bolt that blasted statues of Superman and the Legion of Superheroes before hitting him, giving him all of those heroes’ combined powers.

“Vowing to prove himself Superman and Batman’s equal, he torments the duo again and again. Finally deciding to kill the captured and helpless pair, the Composite Superman suddenly finds his powers fading as the lightning charge in his body dissipates… The Composite Superman’s two Silver Age appearances have a distinct charm and a somewhat unique theme.”

Teenage superhero teams were in the air that month. Kid Flash, Robin and Aqualad also joined forces in The Brave and the Bold 54 for a story that would lead to the formation of the Teen Titans. And over at Marvel, the teenage mutant X-Men were between their fifth and sixth adventures.

October 1962: Superman Faces His Finish

Perhaps because he’s such a powerful character, some of Superman’s best stories concern not his life, but his death.

It’s a case of the irresistible force of Superman meeting the immovable object of mortality, a dramatic conflict that works well in both Jerry Siegel’s 1961 “imaginary” Death of Superman story and Edmond Hamilton’s 1962 “real” The Last Days of Superman tale (Superman 156).

Here, apparently stricken with the Kryptonian Virus X, Superman must decide how to face his end.

“Metropolis … The city I have loved so well!” thinks Superman as he soars. “But I want to get away from it now … to be by myself … to think…”

Brooding on a mountaintop while lightning flashes, Superman thinks, as always, of others: “Nothing can save me, but I’ve got 30 days left! It’s my last chance to help the world, before my end!”

“The tale has utopian qualities, with Superman looking forward to performing great deeds,” noted comics historian Michael E. Grost. “Such an approach anticipates Leo Dorfman’s The Amazing Story of Superman-Red and Superman-Blue (1963). Most of the super-deeds here involve transformations of Earth on an astronomical scale. These recall the cosmic stories which Edmond Hamilton and Otto Binder wrote for Mystery in Space.

“Hamilton wrote several tales in which people rejected by society, instead of becoming bitter, idealistically use their talents for good. Superman … is not a social reject — rather, he is dying. But like Hamilton’s rejects, he too is a person with problems who devotes himself to accomplishments and helping others instead of bitterness. The Last Days of Superman is impressively idealistic.

“This is another Hamilton tale with a community as hero: in this case the community of Superman's friends.”

A cooperative effort in investigation and reasoning by Supergirl, Superman, Saturn Girl and Mon-El finally saves the superhero.

And as for Clark Kent’s coincidental “disappearance,” for once Superman’s friends simply decide to ignore its implications — proving themselves true friends after all.

August 1958: Ranger with a Raygun

Okay, he was no Adam Strange or even a Captain Comet. But Space Ranger managed to hold down the fort in DC’s Tales of the Unexpected and then Mystery in Space for half a decade.

“DC editor Jack Schiff unveiled the Space Ranger in Showcase 15 (1958),” notes the Ultimate Encyclopedia of Comic Book Icons and Hollywood Heroes. “The Ranger had a secret identity — business heir Rick Starr — and donned a red-and-yellow space suit with a bubble helmet and a rocket pack to fight futuristic bad guys (the Jungle Beasts of Jupiter and the Alien Brat from Planet Byra, among others, with a cutesy alien pal, Cryll, by his side.”

“The use of a space helmet to disguise the hero's identity recalls the Moon Man pulp magazine short stories (1933-1937) by Frederick C. Davis,” noted comics historian Michael E. Grost.

However, by the time I started reading Space Ranger, his secret identity had been largely abandoned as superfluous (a character who was always on yet another weird planet hardly needed a disguise).

Like Batman, Space Ranger had no super powers, but Cryll did, being able to transform himself into any animal, like the later Beast Boy. Since Cryll had the whole densely inhabited universe to choose from, he could essentially transform himself into anything. The Martian Manhunter’s super-powered alien pet/pal Zook was similar.

In place of powers or a utility belt, the yellow-clad, translucent-helmeted Ranger had his all-purpose multi-raygun which seemingly could emit any kind of beam: heat, ice, disintegration, and so forth. Space Ranger’s infinitely versatile raygun anticipated Space Ghost’s multi-beam power bands.

Space Ranger and his super-powered assistant echoed the pulp magazine feature Captain Future, created for Thrilling Publications by Mort Weisinger and written by Edmond Hamilton from 1940 through 1944.

“In fact, Hamilton is credited with writing the first two Space Ranger stories from (Gardner) Fox’s plots (The Great Plutonium Plot and The Robot Planet),” noted Bill Schelly in American Comic Book Chronicles.