WC: SUPERBOY #131

For those who know, the significance of this issue of SUPERBOY is readily apparent. For those who don’t, you’ll be finding out all about it by the time we get to the end of the coverage of this issue. By 1966 when this issue was first published, editor Mort Weisinger’s approach to the Superman titles was starting to look a little bit long in the tooth. It didn’t really help that the reduction of the size of the original art boards was having a detrimental effect on many of his key artists, but even that aside, Mort’s style felt further and further out of step, particularly when compared to the things Marvel was beginning to do at the exact same time. One gets the sense that Mort’s interest was beginning to wane a bit.

We’re at the height of Batmania, so this inside front cover house ad promotes the debut of Poison Ivy in the latest issue of BATMAN. Typography here as usual by Ira Schnapp.

This issue, like most, offered up three separate short Superboy adventures to its readers. This first one was written by E. Nelson Bridwell, who was working as Mort’s Assistant Editor during this time. I’m not quite sure how Mort managed to wrangle paying his assistant to write freelance for the company (though the outfit didn’t seem to have any issue with other such as Robert Kanigher doing so) but Nelson would do a variety of stories over the years, both under Mort and thereafter for a variety of editors. His encyclopedic memory of previous stories and lore served him in good stead, and he often turned his plots on some detail of past adventures that only he recalled.

ADDITION: Former DC President Paul Levitz reached out to add: It was pretty standard at DC from the 40s until the 21st century for assistant editors and even editors to write freelance as a sideline, as it was for Marvel in the 60s thru at least the 80s.  At DC major writers who were staffers included Kanigher, Miller, Kashdan and in later years Nelson, Marv, me and many others.  The practice descends from the pulp magazines as the salaries weren’t assumed to be a living wage.

This story is built on a pretty good premise, the sort of idea that a fan like Bridwell would come up with. When Mr. Mxyzptlk returns to Smallville from the Fifth Dimension to bedevil Superboy once more, young Lex Luthor uses his technology to duplicate Mxy’s powers. The two menaces enter into a rivalry as to who is more adept at giving their Boy of Steel nemesis headaches. Superboy is relatively easily able to get Mxyzptlk to say his name backwards, returning him to the Fifth Dimension, but tricking Lex into doing the same doesn’t seem to have any effect. it turns out that Superboy also has to use the computer that gave Lex Mxy’s powers in order to eliminate them, which happens when Lex reads over a numerically-encoded printout of his own name in reverse printed from the computer. Watching from his homeworld, Mxy declares that he’s going to make Lex forget how to copy his powers again, so this situation won’t repeat itself in the future.

All three stories in this issue were illustrated by workhorse George Papp, whose somewhat wooden figures were never all that appealing to me. But it helps that this second tale was scribed by Otto Binder, who had been responsible for much of the Captain Marvel material in the 1940s and 1950s, and who consequently had a good handle on this specific brand of whimsey. If you look closely, you can see how Papp misjudged his space on this splash page, causing the image to be reduced and the uppermost flying fist to be extended at the wrist. This is why there’s so much dead space in the upper left area.

The story is inconsequential, but fun if you can buy into its crazy premise. Superboy suddenly and repeatedly finds himself being attacked by a trio of disembodied arms, all of which are strong enough to injure him. The fists appear at inconvenient times, almost exposing Clark’s true identity to Lana and preventing him from performing his super-deeds. In the end, this is all the result of some exposure to Red Kryptonite, which created the flying arms, which were drawn to a magnet that Superboy was carrying on his person onto which the Red-K particles had fallen. The story does provide a few interesting facts about magnets, so the young readers were perhaps learning some small bit of science while they were entertained.

Next came the Smallville Mailsack letters page. It’s only a guess on my part, but the answers here read to me as though they may have been composed by Bridwell in his capacity as Assistant Editor, rather than by Mort himself. They’re a bit more gentle and playful than the typical Mort responses tended to be.

And now we come to the main event of the issue: the story that introduces the canine counterpart to the Legion of Super Heroes, the Space Canine Patrol Agency, or S.C.P.A. Come on, let’s recite their deathless oath: “Big Dog, Big Dog, Bow-Wow-Wow! We’ll Stop Evil, Now, Now Now!” The name of the writer behind this latest innovation has been lost to the pages of history, which is a shame. It would be really nice to be able to honor the creator of such memorable characters as Tusky Husky, Tail Terrier, Hot-Dog, Bull Dog, Chameleon Collie and Mammoth Mutt.

Let’s pause here a moment so as not to get over-excited. We can take a breath and admire this full-page ad for another 80-Page Giant starring Batman, the hero of the moment. This one’s dedicated to the “Strange Lives” of Batman and Robin, a catch-all for crazy stories involving personal transformations and bizarre circumstances.

So in this story, unhappy that Superboy is leaving him behind to go to the future and hang out with the Legion of Super Heroes, Krypto the Superdog heads off into space, where he finds an injured Mammoth Mutt who has failed to stop some criminal dogs of outer space. Taking up the case, Krypto disguises himself with a spare pair of Clark Kent glasses and also begins chewing on some gum which unbeknownst to him takes away his powers–it’s got a bit of Green Kryptonite lodged in it, not enough to kill him or hurt him, only enough to emasculate him in front of the other members of the S.C.P.A, Mammoth Mutt’s partners. Eventually, after the other S.C.P.A. members have been able to show off their stuff, Krypto discovers his error, ditches his glasses and cleans up on the Canine Caper Gang, stranding them on a world that’s patrolled by the colossal super-powered cats of the Space Cat Patrol Agents, including atomic Tom, Power Puss and Crab-Tabby! Seriously, they do not make them like this any more. The S.C.P.A. returned for two more stories in the immediate future, and have turned up irregularly ever since, whenever some outer space pooch was in need of rescue.