WC: ACTION COMICS #344

I suspect that the middle-late 1960s was a tough time for longtime Superman line editor Mort Weisinger. For the first time in recorded history, Batman was routinely outselling his cash cow from Krypton as a result of the faddish success of the 1966 BATMAN television series. This state of affairs wouldn’t last–the Man of Steel would reassert his superiority shortly, at least until 1989 where he’d lose it to the Masked Manhunter on a more permanent basis. So Mort’s strategy was simple: if you couldn’t beat them, join them! This issue is all about crafting a Bat-Mystery for the Man of Steel and his readerships. Also, I just have to point out how this cover is perhaps the ultimate antithesis of the title, with Superman fast asleep! “ACTION COMICS” indeed!

This opening page addresses the newcomer Batman fans that Mort is hoping will be checking out this issue (though he assures his regular Superman readers that they can enjoy this story as well.) “Superman’s Nightmare Dreams” was written by the skillful Otto Binder and drawn by the primary Superman artist of the 1950s, Wayne Boring. Boring’s style was seeming more and more dated as the 1960s went on, but Mort used him with some regularity on ACTION COMICS through these years. Boring had his own accepted version of Superman, but it has to be said that his depiction of Batman in this story is plenty strange indeed. He doesn’t seem to be quite comfortable with the particulars of the Caped Crusader’s costume, and so he winds up looking like a guy dressed up as Batman for a costume party more than the genuine article.

The story opens with Superman and Batman messing around in the former’s Fortress of Solitude, trying out a new device the Man of Steel has just manufactured. The gizmo swaps the two heroes’ minds, so that Superman is in Batman’s body and vice versa. batman, however, isn’t used to having super-powers and so he makes a bit of a mess of things. In the chaos, one of the compartments on Batman’s utility belt opens, and out fly all of the cards in the Masked Manhunter’s portable rogues’ gallery, showcasing Catwoman, the Mad Hatter and others. Pronouncing their experiment a failure, the pair restore their own minds and make plans to meet again in two days. Thereafter, Superman returns to Clark Kent’s apartment and, despite the readers being told that nothing can tire the Man of Steel, he decides to go to sleep so as to relax his mind. When he does so, he experiences a wild and colorful dream in which he contends with a giant, smiling flower, a marshmallow-laden bulldozer and a mineral man who eats gemstones.

Over the next day and a half, Clark again falls asleep twice (despite not needing sleep nor ever getting tired. So chalk this up to laziness) and he again has strange vivid dreams of being dropped by skyhook onto a pyramid, where he’s attacked by anthropomorphic versions of the letter Y and the Sphinx, and then later a separate dream in which multiple versions of himself are frozen in ice, and then must battle toadstools and birds. Returning to the Fortress and meeting up with Batman, the Darknight Detective has the answer. In the earlier chaos, Superman had been exposed to some Red Kryptonite dust while looking at those portable rogue’s gallery cards, and so his dreams were all influenced by them. And that’s it, that’s the story. Superman and Batman go, “How about that!” and it ends. From a purely action point of view, it’s a bust, and I don’t know that it would prove very effective in reeling in the audience who was then watching BATMAN on television.

The Direct Currents column was never as fun or interesting as the earlier Coming Super-Attractions, but it did spotlight titles for all across the DC line. So it gives us a snapshop as to what was being published by the outfit at the time. It’s a pretty mixed bag, with none of these descriptions quite having the hook-power to draw me in as a reader.

The Supergirl back-up story is of somewhat more interest, as it’s one of a relative few that was written by Weisinger’s young discovery Jim Shooter. At the time he wrote this, Shooter was younger than the character, and he brought a more modern sensibility to some of what he was doing. Some, not all, as Weisinger still wielded a heavy hand as the editor. Of course, it was illustrated by Supergirl’s mainstay artist Jim Mooney, and it concerns the Maid of Might venturing to Gaea, a planet that’s almost identical to Earth, except that it’s run by teenagers, What could be more alien than that?

Upon arriving on Gaea, Supergirl winds up declared a public enemy when she misinterprets what’s going on and prevents some gun-toting teenagers from attacking a carful of fleeing adults. Turns out the adults are all a part of A.R.M, the Adult Revolution Movement, who want to put adults back in charge of the teen-oriented world. Supergirl is fascinated with Gaea and decides to spend her college summer break exploring it. It’s also packed with counterparts to her regular cast of characters, including her adoptive parents the Danvers as well as her college boyfriend Dick Malverne (who is Dick Malvin on Gaea). But Dick is in league with A.R.M, and he sets up a number of situations designed to make Supergirl in her Linda Danvers guise a popular and well-regarded individual. By Page 9, Linda is elected President despite neither running nor campaigning for the job, with Dick as her Veep.

A quick stop-off here for the usual house ad spotlighting an upcoming 8- Page Giant packed with vintage reprint material. In this case, it’s of course devoted to Batman, and collects a variety of stories all from before the current “New Look” era.

But Dick has arranged all of this so that he can get Linda impeached and then assume the Presidency himself, using its powers to put A.R.M. back on top. Don’t laugh, that’s no screwier a plan than most of the conspiracy theories surrounding the last election. Anyway, Dick is ready with cameras when Linda reveals herself as Supergirl, and he’s now prepared to move on to Plan B. But that part of his scheme would play out in the next issue of ACTION COMICS, as this story is To Be Continued at this point.

Finally, in what now feels like a real rarity, the Metropolis Mailbag letters page takes up a full page, rather than having to share space with a Trix ad or some other bit of advertising. The first letter comes from Irene Vartinoff, who would go on to work at Marvel in the 1970s and who married Scott Edelman. It also includes some letters referencing “Brand I”, Weisinger and E. Nelson Bridwell’s answer to Stan Lee referring to the competition as Brand Echh. Try as they might, though, Brand I never caught on, and was swiftly forgotten.