Egg Beater Turkey Levitator

Returning once again to Adventure Comics 156, we see that, in order to prevent his pal Tubby from consuming the roast turkey placed before him, Johnny Quick uses an egg beater to create a draft that sucks the turkey through the window.

I laughed so hard at this. It is so completely, totally, patently impossible. I am not aware of anyone having the nerve to stand up to blatantly obvious goofiness like this back in 1950, but nowadays of course fanboys would be instantaneously up in arms in chat rooms and blogs, calling the writers on such a monumental bluff. Even internal consistency, which allows Superman to fly and Spiderman to swing on webs (natural and artificial) can't hope to bring this one home.

Magic Math

Okay, again in Adventure Comics 156, the character of Johnny Quick appears. He is essentially a slowed-down version of the Flash, who, while an advanced math student, discovers a formula that, when spoken, allows him access to a higher dimension that somehow allows him superhuman speed.

Never mind the ultra-weird design of his costume, and certainly don't mind the conservation of momentum problem that he'd have moving through a room at less than 1/24th of a second, and concentrate on the elements not in this comic book that were revealed to me by this link:

http://theflash.wikia.com/wiki/Johnny_Quick

...in which are shown many interesting things that are clearly linked to my favorite superhero movie of all time (and on my top 10 list of ALL movies!), The Incredibles. The idea that anti-communist paranoia in the 1950's forced superheroes into hiding rather than follow the dictates of the government forcing them to reveal their secret identities is another twist on the Pixar film's use of the one power superheroes couldn't avoid - the lawsuit.

But all of that pales in comparison to my reaction to the idea that a mathematical statement (incomplete and therefore meaningless) can be used as a version of the "Shazam!" Captain Marvel would use to transform. It not only gives him access to the dimensional freedom he needs to move, it also apparently materializes his costume at the same time. This is closely linked with the occultism that continues to flourish at odd times in American culture. Comic books of this era, when they could be bothered, merely glossed over those elements by giving them the faint air of scientific respectability.

Pun Overload

And you thought Arnold Schwarzenegger movies were bad....

Spider-man, in his 1985 incarnation, is inundated with three "helpers", fan boys with stupid costumes and tech gadgets who proceed to fall all over each other trying to prove to Spider-man how great they are.

The puns come fast and thick in this one. Then, as the three fat fan boys go "boinging" off into the sunset, you get this little bit of linguistic fun. The misfits want so desperately to be cool, to have trim and athletic bodies, to be useful. Given their current physical and mental state, this is a pipe dream to beat all pipe dreams. But as the delusional say, when your delusion is shared, you at least aren't lonely anymore. The writers can't resist putting in the "jock" comment at the end, though. Almost casually racist (hardly surprising in 1985) and certainly cruel, it seems strangely out of character for Spider-man to dish this out, considering that until his radioactive spider bite, Peter Parker wasn't really any more impressive.

As for Peter Parker's situation relative to the Superboy post earlier, even Sam Raimi couldn't quite let Peter have the technical wizardry necessary to invent spider webbing and a shooter that pumped out, volume-wise, more than his body weight every time he'd go out to fight crime. Mind you, making it a natural occurence didn't help much either, since the volume is still very problematic. Maybe he did as other spiders do and went back and ate it.

The Other Boy Wonder

Now, in Adventure Comics #156, we see Superboy take on some robbers doing their nefarious work with the help of a helicopter (which they park in an aircraft enthusiast's private collection so as to avoid detection...man they have to stretch this stuff to fit, don't they?). The robber dudes proceed to try to crack the safe on a moving train, are foiled by Superboy, then blow the trestle ahead of the train so that Mr. Honorable can't go after them since he's got to protect the innocent first.

Here's where I had to put on the brakes and really take in everything you are expected to swallow in this scenario. I don't know about you, but I never saw Superman as being this hyperintelligent being who could quite literally fix a trestle bridge (with full knowledge of the engineering and physics involved), then go off to his backyard and make a fully functional, rocket-powered double of himself, arranged with sufficient skill in painting, fashion design and fabrication, and rocket physics to pass as himself flying through the air.

I just don't know, folks. A lot of people aren't actually aware that this past exists for Superman - a sort of Hardy Boys version of himself that totally misses the sex appeal of his later incarnations. And let's face it, the sex appeal is a LARGE part of what the readers of this book back in 1950 would have been looking for - the idea that with a little radiation they could transform themselves from a five foot six inch 98-pound weakling into a six foot four 220-pound Man of Steel, with everything that goes along with that name.

Small wonder that no one outside of hardcore fandom even knows this happened.

Surrealism meets...sexual politics?

From Dell Four Color Comic #244, circa 1948. A lot of cartoons were openly playing with your mind at this time, inserting dream sequences which were a hundred times more entertaining than anything in Inception. The Brownies, a group of three little boy wood sprites, find missing chicken chicks (thought it was a duckling and wandered off into the water), and in this episode, travel through a portal under an oak tree into a land that redefines the term "non sequitur".

Having just seen an ad for the Blu-Ray release of Alice in Wonderland, I can say I've always loved loopy, loony stuff like this. But if you read between the lines, you discover something else about dreams, at least in art. You can insert lines like "you can be our king and king!" and have them play unquestioned. A paranoid parent would surely be gathering a small army to protest outside the publishing offices today, claiming that it's teaching their children that being gay is okay.