April 1967: The Power of the Plump

Offhand, I can think of only two comic book characters who combined portliness with power: Harvey Comics’ Little Lotta and Lightning Comics’ Fatman, the Human Flying Saucer.

Come to think of it, both characters were also pretty cheerful and comfortable in their considerable skins, unlike fitness-frantic Americans of the 21^st century.

“Otto Binder and C.C. Beck, the two men most responsible for the success of Captain Marvel, collaborated on only one other comic book character,” noted comics historian Don Markstein. “Their whimsical point of view, which had been such an important element in Captain Marvel's success, took over almost completely in this one — Fatman, the Human Flying Saucer, was very heavy on the whimsy.”

And hey, his name just happened to rhyme with that of the most popular character on TV at the moment. This Fatman was, of course, no relation to the parody hero of the same name who appeared in Batman 113 (Feb. 1958).

“Beck and Binder chose to reunite for another attempt to catch lightning in a bottle, as it were,” wrote Jon Morris in his book The League of Regrettable Superheroes.

The Nero Wolfe of superheroes, Fatman was “…a plump but athletic character named Van Crawford who was happy to spend his idle time indulging his many and varied hobbies and collections,” Morris noted. “When a spaceship — also a shape-changing alien — crashes within sight of his daily constitutional, Crawford rushes to its aid. He is rewarded for his efforts with the power to transform himself into a UFO.

“Decked out in a suit resembling a verdant version of Captain Marvel’s famous duds, Fatman battled a roster of foes that included the titanic Anti-Man, the hideous Brainman from Mars, underground gnome Grollo, Syntho the Patchwork Man and the lovely but evil Lunita the Moon Witch.”

The Corpulent Crusader was a much sunnier effort than his fairly dreadful companion at Lightning Comics, Tod Holton, Super Green Beret. Both titles, like their publisher, were short-lived.

December 1966: Vanishing Act

Magicmaster was one of several 1960s comic book features that tried to recapture some of Captain Marvel’s lost lightning in a bottle. And this one vanished in a flash.

Creator Jim Steranko had originally called the character Sorcerer, but Harvey Comics editor Joe Simon apparently considered that name to be too difficult to trademark. So the character became Magicmaster, an ancient, powerful superhero conjured up by a boy, Jimmy Apollo.

The son of the murdered stage magician the Mighty Apollo, Jimmy summons the blue-skinned Shamarah, a/k/a Magicmaster, with the help of a “small, dark, crumbling volume of Egyptian magic.” 

“With the aid of the ‘magic dagger of Dharath,’ without which he loses his sorcerous skills, Magicmaster shows off his powers of levitation, invisibility (thanks to a magic cloak) and hypnotic illusion,” noted comics historian Jon Morris.

The pair’s pair of exploits appeared in Double-Dare Adventures 1 and 2 with art by Jack Sparling.

“Per company policy, Harvey test-marketed single issues of the Harvey Thriller line during the previous summer and they sold well enough to justify several ongoing series that began going on sale in June of 1966,” noted John Wells in American Comic Book Chronicles. “The 12-cent Jigsaw 1, Spyman 1, Thrill-O-Rama 2, and Warfront 37 appeared first, followed by 25-cent giants Fighting American 1 and The Spirit 1 in July, and finally two more giants — Double-Dare Adventures 1 and Unearthly Spectaculars 2—in August. Their contents — a mingling of superheroes, generic supernatural tales and the occasional 1950s Jack Kirby reprint — can accurately be described as random.”

Nevertheless, as the Beach Bum Comics blog said, “Magicmaster was one of the first published works of Jim Steranko. It was a shame Harvey Thrillers didn’t last longer than it did.”

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.”

January 1962: Everybody Wants to Be a Cat

Archie Comics’ Cat Girl may well have been a wink at DC’s Catwoman, the popular 1940s villainess who nevertheless hadn’t appeared in six years (since The Jungle Cat-Queen in Detective Comics 211, Sept. 1954).

No successful concept is ever abandoned in superhero comics. It’s always recycled — if not by the original publisher, then by another.

Introduced in The Adventures of the Fly 9 (Nov. 1960), Lydia Fellin was  “…the Sphinx, the original model for the countless ancient statues.”

The superhuman feline immortal clashed with the superhero when she freed big cats from their imprisonment in a zoo. She kept returning, eventually making a dozen appearances in Archie Comics.

Super-strong and armed with claws, Cat Girl was indestructible and could become invisible, fly, teleport, telepathically communicate with cats and gaze into the future.

After a couple of encounters with the Fly, she concentrated her attentions on the Jaguar, Archie Comics’ other superhero of the early 1960s, and promptly fell in love with him.

Seemingly inadvertently, the Jaguar turned out to be quite the lady-killer. Super women, alien women and ordinary women were forever becoming infatuated with him. The Adventures of the Jaguar threatened to become “Catfight Comics.”

Cat Girl rescued the Jaguar from aliens, wooed him with love potions and helped him out by breaking up a ring of cat burglars (who all wore cat masks, naturally).

Cat Girl also joined the all-female “Jaguar Rescue Team.” “In sponsoring this assemblage, the Jaguar may have created every superguy’s worst nightmare: a team made up entirely of ex-girlfriends,” Jon Morris quipped.

Cat Girl would eventually lose most of her supernatural powers through exposure to radiation, retaining only her telepathic control over cats.

In fact, one Cat Girl wasn’t enough for Archie Comics. They had to have two. 

The second was a sultry character in a black leotard meant to complement Archie’s movie monster parodies, and clearly a nod at the two RKO Cat People films made during the 1940s.