WC: SUPERBOY #136

This was the final issue of SUPERBOY that I got as a part of my Windfall Comics purchase of 1988, in which I bought a box of almost 150 Silver Age comics for $50.00, a huge bargain even at that time. By this point, editor Mort Weisinger’s Superman titles were beginning to run out of steam, as they were very much out of step with the culture at large, comic or otherwise. One also gets a sense that Mort may have been getting tired of the grind as well. He wouldn’t keep SUPERBOY much longer, handing it over to Murray Boltinoff after a certain point. This issue, it turned out, was half-reprint.

Mort had been selectively employing reprints more and more often in an effort to lighten his load, packing the back pages of WORLD’S FINEST COMICS with an “Editors’ Round Table” feature as a cover for running a reprint each issue. But this is the first time I can recall Mort putting a reprint in the upfront slot on a book (though he’d do the same in SUPERMAN at around this time as well.) The theory, of course, was that the young readership of these books turned over every 3-4 years or so as kids aged out of being interested in them. So a story from 1960 like this one would be a new adventure to most of the buyers. So why not reprint it and save all concerned some hassle?

This story comes from ADVENTURE COMICS #279 and was written by Otto Binder and drawn by Curt Swan, which meant that the artwork was more attractive and lively than what typically appeared in these pages. In this adventure, Superboy finds himself pulled into the 50th Century by the professor father of Lana Lang’s descendant Lita Lang. Either Mort or assistant editor E. Nelson Bridwell add an explanatory caption to this reprint to cover a hole in the story: they indicate that, by a curious coincidence, Lana’s great-great granddaughter happened to marry a man named Lang as well, so her last name is also Lang just as Lana’s is. In this future time, Superboy is considered to be nothing but a myth, and as the Boy of Steel attempts to prove to everybody other than Lita who he is, his efforts are foiled due to the fact that technology has advanced to the point where all of his super-powers and super-feats are now redundant.

Fortunately for Superboy, a meteor crashes to Earth contaminated with a fast-growing plant scourge called the Creeping Blight. This is fortunate because Superboy saw some White Kryptonite among the souvenirs of his career that Lita Lang had collected–this was the story that introduced White kryptonite, whose radiations are fatal to all plant life. Using the White-K, Superboy is able to save the day. He’s also able to prove that the White-K originated on Krypton (and must have a hell of a half-life if it’s still dangerously radioactive in the 50th Century) thus proving that his home planet existed and that he is who he says he is. With that resolved, Superboy effortlessly cracks the time barrier and returns to his own era. Fortunately, nobody in the 50th Century was a fan of Superman nor had any knowledge of events to come in Clark’s adult life that he might have stumbled over. Phew!

The Smallville Mailsack was still ticking along, with likely E. Nelson Bridwell answering the readers’ questions. Interestingly, one of the answers indicates that Plastic Man was in development as an animated series as well as Aquaman, the latter of which came to pass. The page also includes our old friend the Statement of Ownership, which will give us an opportunity to see just how well the series was selling heading into 1967. The book was selling 719,876 copies on an absurd print run of 1,077,000, giving it an efficiency of 67%, a terrific number! This would have been during the height of Batmania when the whole nation went a bit comic book crazy for a few months. But it’s very impressive nonetheless.

Personally, I credit those surging sales to the recurring guest-stars who turned up again in the back-up story, the Space Canine Patrol Agents! Sing their fighting song with me now: “Big Dog, Big Dow, Bow-Wow-Wow! We’ll Crush Evil…Now, Now Now!” The S.C.P.A. had been introduced five issues earlier as Krypto the Superdog’s own canine equivalent to the Legion of Super Heroes, and they’re so directly ridiculous that they’re absolutely wonderful. Unfortunately, this would prove to be the final S.C.P..A. story for many years. It was written by Otto Binder, who quite probably originated the concept (the writing credit on that first story has been lost to time) and illustrated by George Papp, whose lifeless artwork didn’t really take away from the concept.

In this particular tale, just like the future Legion does, the Space Canine Patrol Agency holds auditions for prospective new members. After Hoodoo Hound fails his tryout when his evil eye fails to hex Top Dog, it’s time for Prophetic Pup to show off his goods. After correctly predicting both what the special gift is that Krypto has brought for his fellow members (inflatable cat-balloons that they can play with when they’re off-duty) and that a nearby spacecraft full of visiting scientists will vanish–which they do when exposed to strange x-rays–Prophetic Pup makes his final prediction: Krypton’s master Superboy will be in life-threatening peril a day henceforth, but a hound will save him.

And a brief pause here for a half-page ad focused on an upcoming issue of ACTION COMICS that will be an 80 Page Giant filled with reprinted classic Supergirl stories.

And indeed, Superboy is lured into a trap by–wait for it–a gang of space pirate cats who are being aided by the Phantom Zone cats, cats whose masters were exiled to the Phantom Zone for their crimes and who were sent along with them to keep them company. They lure Superboy and Krypto to a series of statues as depicted on the cover, each one representing another noteworthy member of Superboy’s lineage. Then the evil cats melt the lead coating shielding Superboy and Krypto from their lethal Kryptonite radiations. As the duo lies in agony, Krypto can see his fellow S.C.P.A. members in the vicinity with his telescopic vision–but one by one, those heroic dogs are waylaid by other situations, and our heroes seem to be doomed. But at the last second, they’re saved by a young autograph collector who happens to be passing by and who can ferry them away from the Kryptonite on his bike. And so Prophetic Pup earns his membership, as Superboy and Krypto were rescued by an autograph hound! Womp-wompp!

And we might as well finish up with another half-page house ad, this one for the latest issue of HOUSE OF MYSTERY featuring Robby Reed in DIAL H FOR HERO, a series in which Robby’s alien H-dial can transform him into any number of bizarre super heroes, in whose forms he can protect his community and the world at large. It was a weird strip, but not without its charms.