BC: WORLD’S FINEST COMICS #224

The reason i borrowed this issue of WORLD’S FINEST COMICS from my grade school friend Donald Sims should be fairly obvious to anybody who has been reading this page for any length of time: I was enamored of DC’s 100-Page Super-Spectacular format. I loved these big, fat books, a mixture of a new story or two and a selection of classic reprints–often, i wound up liking the reprints more than the new material. The format had reached oblivion a year or two previously, so I was always interested in checking out another one of these releases. As I recall, Don’s copy of this book was coverless, but I’m generously starting out with Nick Cardy’s cover for all of you–why should you be as deprived as my younger self was, after all?

The lead story in this issue featured one of the most bizarre continuing series of the Bronze Age. It had been inaugurated by editor Murray Boltinoff when he took over the title, and it was for a short time very popular, at least among casual impulse-buying readers. More hardcore fans struggled with it–especially when Boltinoff would insist that the stories featured the same superman and Batman who were then appearing throughout the DC line. This was the Super-Sons, which followed the adventures of the teenage offspring of Superman and Batman as they grappled with the issues of the day in the style of the Mod Squad. Where did the Man of Steel and the Darknight Detective get teenaged sons and who were their mothers? The stories never told us. That wasn’t really the point anyway. It was more about trying to tap into the youth culture of the time with characters who had become associated with the establishment. So it wasn’t good, but it was fascinating. Years later, future creators would produce a story indicating that the Super-Sons were just a fun computer simulation run by Superman and Batman for their own amusement, and so they didn’t have mothers as the duo had never programmed that fact into their fictional backstory.

The story is about Clark Jr and Bruce Jr as well as their fathers infiltrating Enoyreve “encounter camp” designed to bring estranged families closer together. They’re working to locate a rogue cyborg government agent before he can unleash a deadly nerve gas on a populated area. This is all made more complicated due to the fact that the guru of the camp, Dr. Zamm, has determined that each of the Super-sons would be better off with the other father, and has caused them to pair off in that fashion. It’s all carried off in writer Bob Haney’s typically tone-deaf style, simultaneously attempting to accurately represent the point of view of the younger generation while also being unable to resist sneering at it a little bit along the way.

The artwork was produced by Dick Dillin, a workhorse for DC in this period. He can sometimes be an acquired taste, but I always liked his work–no doubt as a result of him having drawn JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA during the period when I was first discovering it. Here, he’s inked by the heavy-handed Vince Colletta, who doesn’t do too bad a job of it. The faces all start to look like Vince’s, and some of the fine inking is a bit muddy. But none of it is awful, and it doesn’t seem as though Vince is erasing background elements in the manner that he routinely did when working over Jack Kirby’s pages.

The balance of the issue was classic reprints, which tended to be the thing that I liked most. This one, though, was a bit of a mixed bag. Nothing was terrible, but a lot of it was simply there. Case in point, the short Johnny Quick story that comes up next. Produced by Don Cameron and Ralph Mayo, it’s about Johnny’s buddy Tubby Watts becoming an efficiency expert and consequently screwing up Johnny’s crime-fighting efforts. Given my love for the Flash and speedsters in general, I should by all accounts have liked Johnny Quick, especially given that his stories were usually better crafted than contemporaneous Flash tales. But somehow, the strip usually left me cold, and this outing was no exception.

The next bit in the issue was a feature on the making of the Super Friends animated series which had begun to broadcast right when this issue first came out. It’s a very basic making-of sort of a piece that briefly outlines how an animated episode is put together. But the real feature here is the design sheets and storyboards that are reproduced, some of them by comics great Alex Toth who was working on the show.

Next came a classic World’s Finest story by Bill Finger and Jim Mooney. It’s about Superman returning from a space mission only to turn evil and partner up with his enemy Lex Luthor, much to the chagrin of Batman and Robin, who are unable to stop their more powerful partner. But the whole thing is a ruse to make Superman look bad in the eyes of the law–what “returned” from space is a robot Luthor made in Superman’s image, and so when the real Man of Steel shows up, he’s able to quickly put things aright. For whatever reason, editor Murray Boltinoff had a staff artist go through this story, which had originally been produced in 1963, and add the yellow oval around Batman’s costume insignia, thus making him consistent with the contemporary look.

Just had to share this excellent house ad for other DC titles that were on sale at the time. While the reproduction here is a bit iffy, and only one of the books shown was a real super hero title, these ads still made a huge impact on me.

Maybe the best thing in this issue was the full length Metamorpho story by Bob Haney and Joe Orlando, the latter doing his very best to emulate the approach of the character’s co-creator Ramona Fradon. It was an early enough story in the character’s history that it maintained some of the strengths of the series, though they were already beginning to erode away in favor of farce. But at its start, Metamorpho had a quirky “Rat-Pack” sensibility to it that made it very appealing. In this story, master French criminal Achille Le Heel captures billionaire Simon Stagg and his daughter Sapphire and uses them as leverage to force the Element Man to steal the Eiffel Tower and the Taj Mahal for him. This only works for so long before Rex Mason is able to turn the tables on the skunk.

Next up was a double-page installment of the From The World’s Finest Fans letters page, most of which was dedicated to fans speculating on who the mothers of the Super-sons might be, and being stymied at every turn by Boltinoff’s responses. As he often did, Murray edited down the correspondence, pulling specific bits out of letters that he wanted to address (and presumably discarding the bits that he didn’t)

The final story in the issue is another Superman, Batman and robin World’s Finest team-up, and like the earlier story in this issue, Boltinoff again had yellow ovals added to Batman’s costume throughout. It was written by Joseph Greene and illustrated by Curt Swan, and it was only the second such team-up story every produced (not counting the earlier “pilot” episode in SUPERMAN #76.) In it, Batman and Robin are in pursuit of escaped criminals with super-weapons who have broken out of jail and taken Clark Kent and Lois Lane hostage, this preventing the Man of Steel from aiding the Dynamic duo overtly. They’ve got a hideout in a seemingly abandoned fort in which they’re manufacturing the deadly weapons, and it, and which provides the story’s “Fort Crime” title. I remember enjoying this tale quite a bit, in particular for the clever manner in which Clark had to use his super-powers surreptitiously to aid Batman and Robin without disclosing his secret identity in the process. The artwork by the pairing of Curt Swan and Dick Sprang was likewise pretty delightful.