Dr. 13 the Ghost-Breaker

The Devil's Timepiece The Phantom Stranger #13
A grandfather clock that must be wound every hour.
Not much of a clock then is it?

The real killer hid inside the clock, but side views show the clock to be too thin to contain a man.

Terry Thirteen arrives an hour after his friend is killed, so why is the killer still there hiding inside the clock?

NANJAO. In The Phantom Stranger #15 writer Len Wein uses a name that he will use a few years later for a more famous Marvel character, he names an African woman Ororo.

The Phantom Stranger
All stories reprinted in Showcase Presents The Phantom Stranger

The Phantom Stranger #17
For some reason they don't reprint the Dr. 13 story that originally ran in this issue. (Which is a pity because it was the first one I ever read & I'd have liked to reread it.)

A Child Shall Lead Them! The Phantom Stranger #20
The Stranger says, "There are some who credit me with such abilities, with the talent to tamper with lives--but they are wrong!"
Sooooo saving lives & fighting evil isn't tampering with lives???

They think Song has killed the Great Lama & when Song falls out the window Kamset says, "Buddha has judged him!"
I thought Buddha was merely a teacher, not a judge or god.

The Phantom Stranger catches Song before he hits the ground.
Guess he must have used his magic to keep the sudden stop from killing Song.

To learn the image of the newborn babe who is the reincarnation of the High Lama, they sneak into Tibet to the Lake of the Sacred Spirit where an image of the babe forms.
I have no idea how much of that is based on Buddhist teachings or if the writers just made it up.

A Communist soldiers says, "The child will lead you to Hell!
Hell? From the mouth of a Communist who is most likely Chinese & Atheist?

The mark on the forehead of the new Lama is a star, kind of like the star used by the Communists.
I wonder if that was meant to be ironic?

Kamset goes off the cliff to fall to his death.
Given all his magic power why didn't he just cast a spell to save himself?

The Resurrection Of Johnny Glory! The Phantom Stranger #21
Johnny is executed in the electric chair, but his head hasn't been shaved.

Johnny remembers his life & the flashbacks show him.

The chief bad guy is named... Cerebus.
That seems to be a common misspelling of Cerberus, which given the guy bring a man back to life would have been more appropriate.

Johnny Glory throws Cerebus to his death.
He couldn't cast a spell to protect himself?

Dr. 13 the Ghost-Breaker

Stopover! The Phantom Stranger #18
Terry Thirteen certainly takes the presence of aliens in stride. One would think he'd assume there was a down to earth explanation before accepting them as fact.

Also odd is that he doesn't seem too interested in finding out more about them.
True their teleportation device creates a vacuum that sucks the air with which is dangerous, but you'd think that little glitch could be overcome.

The Power The Phantom Stranger #20
Dr. 13 only appears in this story as a narrator, so it was probably intended for a title like House Of Secrets or House of Mystery.

The ICBN of course is since the only people who know what happened are dead how did Dr. 13 know what happened to tell the reader?

A Far Away Place
Another story probably intended for a title like House Of Secrets or House of Mystery.

At the end of this story Dr. 13 is shown saying, "I cannot explain those events. But I know there must be some logical explanations".
Problem is that this story doesn't have anything unusual to an outside observer. George Wheemy meets a stranger who wants to take Mr. Letterman, who's been sick, away on a long trip, the next day Wheemy finds out that Letterman died of natural causes at the time of the intended trip.
What's the mystery? Dr. 13 would simply treat the mystery visitor as a coincidence, a figment of Wheemy's imagination, or a potential murderer, but once you've eliminated the murder angle the first two are unimportant.

Woman Of Stone The Phantom Stranger #21
The woman killing people as Medusa shoots them with "potassium silicate... it's a chemical that gives flesh a stone-like quality when absorbed through the pores of the skin!"
But does this stuff work as fast as we see in the story?
Also wouldn't an autopsy reveal the presence of this substance?

The Elongated Man
All stories reprinted in Showcase Presents The Elongated Man

The Back Cover blurb reads, "Ralph Dibney is the Elongated Man, a self-taught super-hero".
Aren't most super-heroes self-taught? Superman, Flash, Aquaman, etc., all pretty much learned using their powers & crime-fighting as they went along with no Batman-like mentors to teach them the ropes.

NNANJAO. "Illustrated by the legendary Carmine Infantino, Neal Adams, Murphy Anderson and Gil Kane."
Neal Adams did 1 story, Murphy Anderson did 6 stories & Gil Kane did 2 stories. Certainly not listing them by the amount of work they did. (Carmine Infantino did 40 of the 51 stories if you were wondering.)

Ten Miles To Nowhere! Detective Comics #327
Apparently in the DC universe Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde were real.

Sue says to Ralph, "The Elongated Man solves crimes -- not commits them!"
Does she not remember, or didn't he tell her about, him helping Captain Cold escape in The Flash #134 or stealing some crown jewels in The Flash #138? True in both cases he was affected by something external, but he still did them.

Curious Case Of The Barn-Door Bandit! Detective Comics #328
This is the first story to establish that Ralph's nose twitches when he senses a mystery.
Why it would twitch though, I'm not sure. I can consciously twitch my nose, although that is actually the muscles in my face causing the movement, whereas Ralph's nose wags like a dog's tail.
I suppose it could be anti-nitted as a side-effect of his body becoming so flexible because of the gingold. Later stories would have him stretching out portions of his body you wouldn't think could stretch logically.

A resort town called Florida Beach??? Is there really such a generically named place?

Hidden inside the barn-door was money stolen from the Locality Bank.
Is this story set in Generic County?

The barn-door bandit knocks Ralph unconscious.
Does the Elongated Man have to consciously make part of his body rubbery because I would have assumed that his head would have rebounded from a blow.

Puzzle Of The Purple Pony! Detective Comics #329
Jimmy Crowder painted a wild horse purple because of an old Indian prophecy which translates to English as "When a wild pony turns purple and a hundred years pass, The Lost Frenchman Mine will be found with a lass!"
Why would the Indians make-up a prophecy about finding a lost mine?

The Robbery That Never Happened! Detective Comics #333
Page 3, Panel 4. NNAN. The sleeve of Ralph's jacket & shirt are stretched much further than they should be if they are made of ordinary fabric.

Ralph is supposedly stepping out a window 14 floors above the street & yet the side of the building we see as he's doing this has recessed areas of varying sizes that don't quite add up. There are 13 recesses from the window he's stepping out of to a roof of the lower section of the hotel, that section has 2 recessed areas & we see people walking below. Since the recessed areas are touching they can't be windows, or only some of them are.

Battle Of The Elongated Weapons! Detective Comics #334
The villain invents a spray that can elongate inanimate objects touched by the Elongated Man.
Uh, yeahhhhh...
Most of the objects touched seem to have only come into contact with his costume, not his skin.

The villain can also control the objects mentally.
Okayyyyyyyy...

The villain also elongates the road the Elongated Man is running on after the villain.
Maybe he should have used this stuff on the reader's suspension of disbelief?

Page 7, Panel 4. The caption reads, "Stretched to his extreme length".
Actually he has stretched farther than the distance shown here. Heck the last story showed him stepping out of a 14th floor window to the street.
In Detective Comics #340 its stated that his stretching limit is about a 100 yards.

Mystery Of The Millionaire Cowboy! Detective Comics #340
Page 8, Panel 1. The Editor's Note says that the limits of the elongated Man's elasticity is about a 100 yards.
All of him or just parts? We see him stretch his leg about a 100 yards in issue #333 & we see, or hear of, him taking 100 yards steps in issues #337 & 339. (John Broome wrote this story while Gardner Fox wrote 333, 337 & 339. A later story by Broome has EM taking 50 yard steps instead of the usual 100 yard steps. So clearly to two writers had different ideas of how far EM could stretch.)
Either way, Sue is a very lucky woman.
Also in Flash #115, his second appearance, he feels he can stretch "almost without limit!"

The Elongated Man's Change-Of-Face! Detective Comics #341
Six months earlier the 4 Morton brothers came to Powderkeg & secretly planted time bombs to go off if the brothers don't reset the timing device every 10 hours.
1. How secretly can outsiders plant bombs in a small town?
2. Since there's only 4 & no henchmen why not overwhelm them, tie them up and stick them in 4 buildings around town & wait for one of the brothers to crack, since I doubt they want to be killed by their own bombs.

Peril In Paris! Detective Comics #344
Ralph turns the crooks over to the Gendarmes.
The Gendarmes are not the Paris police, even though Americans think they are. The Gendarmes patrol Rural areas & serve under the Army. The Paris Police serve under a different department & are not military. (According to Murder Ink: The Mystery Lover's Companion the proper way to address a Paris Policeman is as Monsieur l'Agent with a silent T.)

Story begins with Sue suddenly speaking & reading French, then she thinks she is a French woman named Monica, at the end the real Monica thinks she's Sue & kisses Ralph which snaps Sue & Monica back to normal. Ralph hypothesizes that under hypnosis the magician crook somehow switched the personalities of Monica & Sue.
Uhhhhh, yeahhh, surrrrrre...
Somehow trying to explain these outrageous things without using superscience or real magic just doesn't work.

Peephole To The Future! Detective Comics #346
NANJAO. Page 3, Panel 3. one of the headlines reads "Carmine Elected".
The penciller was Carmine Infantino.

This story is set in Empire City, however when the crooks are trying to escape they decide to take the Lincoln Tunnel instead of the George Washington Bridge.
Aren't those New York City landmarks?

The Man Who Hated Money! Detective Comics #347
At the end of the story it's revealed that DJ Flip Philips made up the story about being robbed by a man who hated money.
Problem is the story begins presenting the unusual robbery as if it really happened, not in a flashback as the DJ tells his listeners what happened.

Some crooks expecting the Elongated Man to show up catch one of Ralph's fists in a bucket of quick-drying cement.
Previous stories have shown Ralph making his body extra thin so why not do this with his hand?
Also the previous story had Ralph lift up two men one-handed & I doubt the cement is that heavy.

The Case Of The Costumed-Made Crook! Detective Comics #351
Grungy Nitpicking time.
Coast City was established as being on the west coast in Green Lantern #13 (June 1962).
In The Flash #130 (August 1962) we find out that Blue Valley (home of Kid Flash) is about 2000 miles southeast of Goldville, Wyoming.
Unfortunately I don't know how close Blue Valley is to Central City, but I would assume close since Kid Flash was Flash's sidekick.
The story starts at a motel midway between Central City & Coast City. Ralph discovers that his old uniform has been stolen, so he has Sue drive on ahead to Central City while he drives back to Coast City to look for clues. He leaves after dinner & arrives the next morning. Now assuming the two cities are about 2000 miles apart & he drove for 8 hours that comes to driving at 125 miles an hour. Not bad for a rental car.
Of course it gets even worse. He captures the costume thief that evening, then is in Central City the next day in time for the presentation of his old costume to the Flash museum, time not given. If it's in the morning he would have had to drive 250 miles an hour to get there. If it's in the afternoon he probably could have toodled along at 125 for 16 hours. Faster if he needed a nap. ;-)
Although he could have just bought a plane ticket or possibly had Green Lantern ring him there (he met GL in the last story).
Still it seems like Gardner Fox thought the 2 cities were a lot closer.

The Puzzling Prophecies Of The Tea Leaves! Detective Comics #353
Page 3, Panel 4. Sue's dialogue is more appropriate for a thought, but it's put in a speech bubble instead of a thought balloon.

Ralph says, "Nobody has the ability to read the future from tea leaves".
Doesn't sound any crazier than seeing the future from an impurity in gingold like you did in Detective Comics #346.

Miss Ayda tells Ralph that the Loftus Jewel Salon will be robbed by three men. However we only see two robbers.
Now while it's true that she simply overheard a planned robbery & probably guessed the wrong number, Ralph does not act as if there might be a third person around when he takes care of those two men. Given she was right about the robbery he should have been expecting another person.

The Tantalizing Troubles Of The Tripod Thieves! Detective Comics #355
When Sue thought she was performing magic in issue 348 Ralph was skeptical. When he encountered a woman who supposedly read the future in tea leaves in issue 353, he was skeptical. Here he meets Zatanna for the first time & has no problem accepting her magic for real.
Okayyyyyyyyyyy...

Tragedy Of The Too-Lucky Thief! Detective Comics #357
Page 3, Panel 4. Printing error. The O in "to" looks like a C.

NANJAO. Page 9, Panel 2. Greene's TV Repair.
Sid Greene was the inker of this story.

The Faker-Takers Of The Baker's Dozen! Detective Comics #358
Ralph reaches out a hand to grab the crook's car when he's knocked unconscious. When he wakes he finds his finger has hooked the crook's car and he follows it to where the car went.
What about that hundred yard stretching limit?

The Curious Clue Of The Circus Crook! Detective Comics #361
Ralph & Sue visit Magnum's Mammoth Circus where he first got his start as an India Rubber Man.
Except that in Flash #112 his origin only mentions Ralph's visiting circuses to try to learn the secret of stretching from the India Rubber Men & that when he discovered he could stretch he vowed he would only use it in emergencies or to help people. No mention of using it to become a circus freak.

Enigma Of The Elongated Evildoer! Detective Comics #367
Ralph is unwilling to believe there must be an elongated evildoer & Sue asks, "Why not? If you can elongate yourself, maybe somebody else has found a way to do it, too!"
You mean like Plastic Man, Jimmy "Elastic Lad" Olsen, Amorpho (Plastic Man villain) or even Metamorpho?
There's also Martin Beene who can elongate inanimate objects & Ralph doesn't know how he did that.
Also Ralph realized that Gingold was what allowed "Indian Rubber Men" to stretch so why not someone else?

The Treacherous Time-Trap! Detective Comics #368
The Atom is held prisoner in a grandfather clock, his fingers are tied to strings so he can't activate his size-control device in his gloves. The Elongated Man stretches a finger into the clock to activate the Atom's control device and he shrinks. However when the Atom is explaining how he got there the flashback has Chronos explain to Atom that if he wriggles his fingers he'll set off the bomb.
How could Atom shrink out of the threads without setting off the bomb if wriggling his fingers would set it off?

Ralph captures four crooks at around the same time Atom captures Chronos & yet Page 8, Panel 4 shows the Atom with Chronos already at police headquarters when Ralph enters with the crooks.
Given that Ralph could wrap up the crooks and take 100 yard strides, whereas the Atom is way too small to carry Chronos, how the heck did Atom beat him to the station???

Case Of The Colorless Cash! Detective Comics #370
NANJA in-joke. Kane's Krunchy Kandy.
The penciller was Gil Kane.

Why would a police laboratory have an interferometer? Apparently it just measures the wave-lengths of light-beams. What use would that be in a police investigation?

Page 6, Panel 5. The caption explaining what an interferometer is reads, "A device for measurinave-lengths of light-beams."
Looks like the letterer goofed up.

Also Page 6 is missing the page number. All the other pages, except 1, have them.

The crooks have an ultra-sonic radiation device that can make the printing on paper money become invisible.
errrrr... yeahhhhhhh... riiiiiiiiight...
Why do I get the feeling they came up with the title first then tried to figure out a way to make a story out of it?

How strong is Ralph?
Superstrength has never been listed as one of the Elongated Man's powers, however sometimes he's shown doing some feats requiring more strength than an average human.

Detective Comics #339 - He picks up a crook with an already elongated hand & slams him into the ceiling.

Detective Comics #345 - Picks up 2 crooks by the ankles, one-handed, & pile drives them into the floor.

Detective Comics #357 - Apparently picks up & throws a crook into a dart board. (Possibly he could have picked up a crook who was charging him, the artist only showed the throw.)

Detective Comics #361 - Controls two 2-horse chariots with one hand each. (Possibly these were well-trained horses & didn't require much strength if they ran a rehearsed pattern.)

Detective Comics #364 - Lifts two scuba divers out of the water while he's still submerged.

Detective Comics #369 - Catches three falling crooks before they hit the ground.

Detective Comics #371 - Picks up a ladder with two crooks hanging onto it and spins it in the air.

Ralph & Sue's travels
Sometimes the locations of the Dibney's are related, sometimes there's a big jump from one spot to another. Since Detective Comics came out monthly one might assume that the would be an order to their travels, so I've decided to list the locations.
327 - returning to the US from eastern Canada near Lake Champlain
328 - Florida Beach (Florida?)
329 - Cactus City in the American southwest, possibly Utah or Nevada
330 - Mojave Desert, California
331 - Gotham City, (previously established as being in New York)
332 to 334 - not listed, although 332 may be a southern city as Sue was tanning herself
335 - Fairview City
336 - Central City
337 - Paulistown & Federal City
338 - Amsterdam taking a ship back to the US
339 - Zenith City, apparently near Gotham since a Gotham PI was tracking a crook here & Batman shows up
340 - Midwest City
341 - Powderkeg, near Midwest City
342 - somewhere in the southwest
343 - just returned from a tour of South America, while in the Andes learned of a Nazi & tracked him to Gotham City
344 - Paris, France
345 - not listed
346 - Empire City (New York City substitute, even has a George Washington Bridge & Lincoln Tunnel)
347 - Four Corners & Silver City
348 - Malem (Salem, Massachusetts, substitute)
349 - Vermont foothills
350 - Coast City (previously established as being on the west coast, one year has passed since issue 332)
351 - roadside motel midway between Coast City & Central City
352 - Monte Carlo, as part of a tour of Europe
353 - Quaker City
354 - Empire City
355 - Rover City
356 - Dune City
357 - Hollyvale
358 - York City, east coast
359 - Chestnut City
360 - London, England
361 - Grassy Corners
362 - not listed
363 - Wishbone City
364 - Florida coast
365 - Power City
366 - Prairie City
367 - Sun Mountain Lodge in the ski country of Nevada
368 - Ivy Town
369 - not listed
370 - Grand City & nearby Everett
371 - California near some abandoned Spanish missions

Admittedly it's tough to pin down some locations because of insufficient evidence on the fictional cities, but for the most part it seems to hold together, although there are some odd jumps, particularly the out of country trips which seem to be mostly boring for the Dibneys. (I guess crime is such a rarity in other countries.) Other jumps could be explained as either a plane trip or a boring car ride. i.e. California to Gotham City and Vermont to Coast City.

NANJAO. Midwest City has appeared previously. It was the home of Captain Comet in the 1950s (Strange Adventures) & it was the home of the villain Amos Fortune (Justice League of America #6).

The War That Time Forgot was, possibly, one of DC's more bizarre war series & it brought together US soldiers fighting Dinosaurs (or dinosaurlike creatures) during WWII.

A general nit for the series would be that the prehistoric beasts are bigger, stronger & tougher than any real-life counterpart: pterosaurs bigger than planes, creatures that can pick up submarines, monsters that can shrug off bullets & small explosives like Superman.

Also the shear number of different islands that these creatures pop up on is amazing.

But at the same time it's generally a fun read.

All stories reprinted in Showcase Presents The War That Time Forgot

Island Of Armored Giants! Star Spangled War Stories #90
Page 5, Panel 2. "That armored giant from the ice age".
Mesozoic age actually, although IIRC one theory popular in the '60s was that dinosaurs died out in an ice age.

Last Battle Of The Dinosaur Age! Star Spangled War Stories #92
In issue 90 the island was called Mystery Island, here it's called X Island.

In issue 90 the submarine had 57 on it, here the cover shows the sub as K1 & on Page 3, Panel 5 the number 375 is shown

The Frogman And The Dinosaur! Star Spangled War Stories #94
None of the creatures in the story are dinosaurs.

Guinea Pig Patrol! Star Spangled War Stories #95
Page 6, Panel 1. The caption calls the giant pterosaur a "flying dinosaur".
Dinosaurs could not fly & did not have wings (unless you count birds as dinosaurs).

Page 7, Panel 1. Caption calls an aquatic beast an "underwater dinosaur".
While there is evidence of some dinosaurs being able to swim it was different branches of the reptile tree that lived underwater.

All stories reprinted in Showcase Presents The War That Time Forgot

Another recurring nit is the artists having groups of dinosaurs including herbivores & carnivores attacking Humans rather than each other.

The Island Of Thunder Star Spangled War Stories #98
Nicky is supposed to be a professional paleontologist, but he calls a pterodactyl a dinosaur.

Nicky says, "And I don't even have a feather from that pterodactyl as proof that I even saw one!"
Feathers??? When have paleontologists believed pterosaurs had feathers?

Page 7, Panel 4. The caption spells Triceratops, "Tricerotops".

Nicky says, "A pterodon! Like the specimen that got the plane!"
Pteranodon & no the 2 pterosaurs were drawn like 2 different species.

The Circus Of Monsters! Star Spangled War Stories #99
A giant dino is coming at them & they climb a tree.
Why do people in Comics, TV & Movies insist on making it easier for a dino to bite them by climbing up around their mouth level?

Steve says, "That "four-legged pill-box"".
They're being attacked by a bipedal dinosaur, not a quadruped.

The Volcano Of Monsters! Star Spangled War Stories #100
Okayyyyy, the Japanese planted an automatic missile launcher in an extinct volcano occupied by dinosaurs.
How the heck did they live to finish the job? Or is this another case of the dinos being conveniently awakened after the thing was built?

One dinosaur thinks the missles are its eggs.
Wha...?
Okayyy...

Punchboard War! Star Spangled War Stories #102
The giant Japanese robot's control panel is in the palm of its hand.
What a silly place to put it, especially since it makes it easier for the heroes to destroy it.

Doom At Dinosaur Island! Star Spangled War Stories #103
G.I. Robot is said to have a responsometer.
I wonder if Kanigher wrote this story before or after the first Metal Men tale?
The Metal Men appeared before G.I. Robot, but their first story was written quickly to fill a hole in the schedule for Showcase, so possibly the term responsometer was created here first.

The soldier thinks the giant robot turned on its creators.
Huh? No evidence for this assumption is given. Also I'd think it far more likely that the dinosaurs running rampant on the island were more responsible.

The Tree Of Terror! Star Spangled War Stories #104
One of the brothers seems surprised at seeing a prehistoric monster, but what about the three previous stories?

In issue 99 the Flying Franks/Flying Boots were Henny, Steve & Tommy. Here they are Chuck, Bill & Al.

#99 - The Flying Franks were the best flyers (trapeze men) under any big top.
#100 - The Flying Franks are known in the military as the Flying Boots.
#103 - It's revealed that they had trouble getting hired by Zig-Zag Zak's circus.
#104 - The Flying Boots are indicated to be flops.
Now given that the names have changed from the first story one could argue that there are two sets of 3 acrobatic trapeze artists calling themselves the Flying Boots, but it seems a stretch.
Kanigher never was one to let continuity bog him down.

The Last Soldiers Star Spangled War Stories #109
Page 6, Panel 4. Final caption reads, "End of part one of "No Medals In The Dinosaur War!" Part two has this as title instead of "The Last Soldiers".

Doom Came At Noon! Star Spangled War Stories #114
Page 13, Panel 2. That sure is a legible note considering it was written by someone who was snowblind.

The Suicide Squad! Star Spangled War Stories #116
"A new combat team who hate each other--more than they did the enemy!"
Variations on this phrase would be on all the Morgan & Mace tales. Thing is Mace doesn't seem to hate Morgan. He actually understands why Morgan hates him (Mace & Morgan's younger brother were bobsledders & Morgan's brother got killed because Mace panicked).

Still one has to wonder why Morgan hasn't been locked up? He obsessively points a gun at Mace and tells him that if he sees Mace panic & run, he'll kill him.

Yet another nasty Morgan in fiction. The Morgan & Mace tales are the worst in the collection.

The Killer Of Dinosaur Alley! Star Spangled War Stories #121
Soldier sees some monsters & thinks, "So the "Section 8" reports we've been getting from men on missions--about a dinosaur age waking up on uncharted islands--shouldn't have sent them to the booby hatch for a rest!"
So I guess all the recurring characters we see were smart enough to keep their mouths shut.
Still, one report of seeing dinosaurs I can see being considered a sign of mental problems. Two or three such reports might be considered an unusual coincidence. But considering all the places 'dinos' have popped up in these stories & all the soldiers who would have seen them (not to mention that in some stories there should have been remains of the bodies) you'd thunk that Section 8's wouldn't be so common. For that matter if dinosaurs had really started popping up on islands all over the Pacific (not to mention the occasional story set elsewhere) you'd think the military might start warning the soldiers about this.

The Dinosaur Who Ate Torpedoes! Star Spangled War Stories #123
They mission was to recover or destroy a lost bomb site from a sunken ship before the enemy does. An underwater prehistoric monster eats the bomb site & the soldier thinks he still has to destroy the bomb site. He gets some TNT in the monster teeth & the monster head blows up & the soldier reports mission accomplished.
Errr... no. The bomb site is probably in the monster's stomach by now. If the soldier didn't think the monster eating it would destroy it why would he think its any safer in the stomach of a dead monster? Unless maybe he cut open the monster belly & retrieved the device it should still be in the belly of the monster.

Tidbit For A Tyrannosaurus! Star Spangled War Stories #125
The "tyrannosaurus" is shown with 3 claws on its hands instead of 2.

The Secret Story of Ray-Gun 64 Mystery In Space #5 Reprinted in DC Super Stars #9
Mark Saunders & his wife are supposed to be on Venus, so why do the shots of Venus's sky show lots of large bodies (planets or really close stars?) & a ringed planet larger than our moon?

The Unknown Soldier was a man with a battle-ruined face who served as a special agent using disguises. He was well-trained and could be assigned to any field of service.

All Stories reprinted in Showcase Presents The Unknown Soldier

Star Spangled War Stories #153
The cover does not match the story seen in this issue, but does match a scene from next issue's origin of the Unknown Soldier.

Kill The General! Star Spangled War Stories #163
Okayyyyyyyyyy, since the first story, set in 1942, the Unknown Soldier was shown to have a black sergeant as his aide. In this story the aide is revealed to be Chat Noir whom the Unknown Soldier met in issue 155, set in early June 1944.
Now this story is set in December 1944 & I suppose it's possible that the sergeant who served pre-June 1944 could have been a completely different person (none of the stories set before June 1944 in this collection name the aide), so it may be a nit or it may not.

The Hornet's Nest! Star Spangled War Stories #177
This story reveals that the masks the Unknown Soldier wears causes the scar tissue to itch so he scratches & this is how the Nazis will figure out who he is.
Oddly enough most of the scratching in previous stories must have been off-panel since there didn't seem to be any sign of it.

Star Spangled War Stories #178
The cover does not match any scene in the actual story.

Star Hawkins was a private eye in the late 21st century.

The Case Of The Martian Witness! Strange Adventures #119 Reprinted in Detective Comics #444
The spaceport announces a flight to the Asteroids.
The Asteroids run all the way around the sun. Unless the ship just runs around the whole asteroid belt, dropping people off & picking them up, that destination is a nit.

Vesta is round & has an atmosphere, a red jungle, a sea & apparently Earth-like gravity.
Pictures from Hubble show it not so round & seem to have missed the jungle & sea.

Ask the Answer Man Daily Planet Extra Week of December 12, 1978
Really grungy nit. The Answer Man is asked when Star Sapphire first appeared & the answer is given for the Silver Age Star Sapphire, not the Golden Age one. (True, the Silver Age one would most likely be the one the writer was asking about, but I'm a nitpicker.)

Deadman
Requiem For A Deadman! Adventure Comics #464
NNAN. Was Boston brand killed in, or near, Gotham City? This story begins in Gotham. Deadman gets a mental summons to a psi-lab built over the site where he was murdered. The implication is that the lab must be in, or around, Gotham, since there is no other reason for naming the city in the opening caption if the lab was in Podunk or someplace.
Still makes one wonder why Batman didn't get involved with the Boston Brand case earlier than The Brave And The Bold #79, especially considering that Robin's parents were circus trapeze artists who were murdered.

Star Spangled War Stories #150 Reprinted in Showcase Presents Enemy Ace Volume 1
Cover. "Back from the Golden Age of Comics The Viking Prince".
The Viking Prince first appeared in 1955. Most sources list the Golden Age as ending before that.

Enemy Ace was Rittmeister Hans Von Hammer, the Hammer from Hell, WWI Germany's top flying ace. (Basically a fictional version of the Red Baron.)

A recurring theme that keeps coming up in the series is how Von Hammer feels others think of him as a killing machine, even his own plane.
Frankly it's not hard to imagine Von Hammer is a little nuts. ;-)

Enemy Ace Our Army At War #151
Hmmm, wouldn't a story from the POV of a German officer be a contradiction to the title OUR ARMY At War?

He shoots a Spad coming over the top of a German zeppelin he's trying to protect.
Wouldn't that be dangerous? Exploding plane over something possibly filled with hydrogen? (Given that the last remaining Spad pilot destroyed the zepp by crashing into it I'd say it was hydrogen.)

Killer Of The Skies! Showcase #57
Page 24, Panel 2. Von Hammer's word balloon is pointing to the Hunter.

The Slayers And The Slain! Star Spangled War Stories #138
In the first story, set in 1918, Von Hammer was said to have gotten his 50th victory. This story, set in 1914, he's said to have gotten his 59th victory.

The Hangman, a scarred French pilot, wears a hangman's hood & a noose with a long-trailing rope.
I should think the hood might slip & obscure his vision, while that rope might catch on something.

The Face Of The Hangman Star Spangled War Stories #140
On the cover Denise's hair is shaded very light, but inside it's shaded very dark.

Vengeance Is A Harpy! Star Spangled War Stories #142
Denise's hair is now shaded very light, unlike her last appearance.

Return Of The Hangman Star Spangled War Stories #145
Von Hammer is narrating the story & somehow knows how the Hangman survived their last encounter, but how he knows is not explained.

Okayyyyyy, Von Hammer flies his Fokker Triplane under some telephone wires knowing that the Hangman's Spad is to big to fit through.
Now while the Spad's wings are certainly longer than the Triplanes, the Triplane looks taller & which is mainly how the artist drew them passing under (okay there was some yawing of the plane wings, but it didn't seem to be enough to be a problem).

Luck Is A Puppy Named Schatzi! Star Spangled War Stories #148
Title reminds me of some of Charles Schulz's Peanuts books.

This story has Von Hammer treating a puppy like a good luck charm.
Usually he's more practical about such things. No date is given on the story so maybe it's very early in his career?

Not very bright of him to take a puppy on a mission without securing it somehow.

Special Pin-up: Enemy Ace - The Hammer Of Hell Star Spangled War Stories #158
"Essentially the difference between ally and enemy lies in the relative position of the individual soldier."
What an overly simplistic statement. I think a key difference lies in the cause they are fighting for. Sure you can make the argument that some soldiers have no say in whether they serve or not (in particular dictators may kill those who choose not to fight), but still I think it is an important distinction. Enemy Ace in particular never seemed to have a problem with his Germany attempting to conquer other countries & while he may have mourned the men he killed & the German pilots who died he never questioned what Germany was doing.

Hell's Angels, Part One: The Hammer Of Hell! Star Spangled War Stories #181
NANJAO. This three issue storyline was a crossover between the Enemy Ace series & the Balloon Buster series. (Balloon Buster was American cowboy pilot, Steve Savage.)

NNAN. Previously Von Hammer's aide was Schulz, but with this story he's been replaced by someone named Schmidt.

Von Hammer thinks, "The sky allows a pilot only one mistake... his last!"
Several stories before this have shown pilot's making mistakes & surviving.

Hell's Angels, Part Two: The Maverick Ace! Star Spangled War Stories #182
Savage says, "Only one fella rides a red Fokker tripe like that".
The Red Baron? Oh, wait, he doesn't seem to exist in this universe. ;-)

Death Is A Wild Beast! Men Of War #1
NNAN. Here Von Hammer's aide is named Schultz rather than Schmidt or Schulz as previously.

Brother Killers! Men Of War #9
Last issue Von Hammer had to fly his triplane from his Jadgstaffel to his father's castle indicating that it quite a ways away from where he is based. However when he goes for a ride into the woods the black wolf that's normally near his Jadgstaffel is here.

The insignia on the French fighter's plane is described as an executioner at the guillotine, but when shown it only shows the guillotine. (It is shown correctly next issue.)

Death Must Wait! Men Of War #20
NANJAO. Wow! They actually mention Manfred von Richthofen (aka the Red Baron). Based on the prior stories (published over a span of around 15 years) I'd have guessed there was a ban on mentioning him in an Enemy Ace story.

I Am My Own Executioner Part Two: Death Of A Double! The Unknown Soldier #261
The recap of last issue includes a hug from Nurse Monika that we didn't see last issue.

A Very Private Hell Part Two: The Substitute Ace The Unknown Soldier #266
Last issue the reward for Von Hammer was $150,000, with this issue it drops to $100,000.

A Very Private Hell Part Three: Debt Of Blood The Unknown Soldier #267
Steve Savage has changed since the last time he & Von Hammer met. Then he scoffed at the idea that war could be a gentlemanly affair with honor, here he's being very honorable & gentlemanly.
I'd guess that in the years since the first meeting was written writers had altered Savage's personality, but it's still a nit.

Enemy Ace Enemy Planes Downed Scoreboard
1914
Star Spangled War Stories #138 - 2 (numbers 58 & 59)
Star Spangled War Stories #139 - 2
Star Spangled War Stories #140 - 3
Star Spangled War Stories #141 - 2
Star Spangled War Stories #142 - 3
Star Spangled War Stories #145 - 2

1916
Star Spangled War Stories #200 - 0 (well, technically he downed a German pilot trying to kill him, but I don't think that counts)

1917
Our Army At War #153 - 4
Our Army At War #155 - 3
Star Spangled War Stories #147 - 2
Men Of War #8 - 2
Men Of War #9 - 1
Men Of War #10 - 3
Men Of War #12 - 2
Men Of War #13 - 1
Men Of War #14 - 3
Men Of War #19 - 2
Men Of War #20 - 2, maybe 3

1918
Our Army At War #151 - 4 (numbers 50, 51, 52 & 53)

Year Unknown
Showcase #57 - 4
Showcase #58 - 5
Star Spangled War Stories #143 - 5
Star Spangled War Stories #144 - 1
Star Spangled War Stories #148 - 9
Star Spangled War Stories #149 - 1
Star Spangled War Stories #150 - 4
Star Spangled War Stories #152 - 0
Star Spangled War Stories #181 - 2
Star Spangled War Stories #182 - 0
Star Spangled War Stories #183 - 1 (he is shown strafing a base with planes, but I don't know if that counts since they weren't airborne)
Men Of War #1 - 2
Men Of War #2 - 1
Men Of War #3 - 3
The Unknown Soldier #251 - 2
The Unknown Soldier #252 - 1
The Unknown Soldier #253 - 4
The Unknown Soldier #260 - 2
The Unknown Soldier #261 - 2
The Unknown Soldier #265 - 2
The Unknown Soldier #266 - 2
The Unknown Soldier #267 - 0

Some may remember me not understanding why Marvel put out an Essential edition of their 20 year out-of-date guide to the Marvel Universe.

Well, DC joins in on baffling me by putting out a Showcase Presents edition of their 20-year out-of-date Who's Who books. Apparently it'll be the full Who's Who in the DC Universe along with the 1989 update, but sheesh! the original book was out-of-date in some cases in less than a month! (DC had a no spoiler policy so even though they knew of a change coming up they wouldn't list it. IIRC the issue with the Barren Earth entry came out the same month as the final issue of Conqueror Of The Barren Earth (which was the last we ever saw of it) so that entry was incomplete.)

Why not just put out updated editions? Why? Why? Why?

Enemy Ace
Vengeance Is A Harpy! Star Spangled War Stories #142
Can't believe I missed this one. My dad pointed it out to me.
The Harpy's plane has lost most of it's left wing and Von Hammer helps her land, then the next panel show her plane missing part of it's right wing with the left wing whole.

The Spawn of Frankenstein was the monster from the novel Frankenstein thawed out of the ice & brought back to life in the present day, still misunderstood & feared.

All stories reprinted in Showcase Presents The Phantom Stranger Volume 2

The Terror And The Compassion The Phantom Stranger #27
Page 3, Panel 6. The spawn of Frankenstein, who is normally human-sized, towers over the car in this panel.

Night Of The Snake God The Phantom Stranger #28
Despite continuing from last issue the man & woman are wearing different clothes.

Turn-About! The Phantom Stranger #30
Issue 23 said the spawn had steel-hard skin, but this issue snakes are able to bite him.

Dr. Thirteen, Ghostbreaker
...And The Dog Howls Through The Night! The Phantom Stranger #34
Terry explains the the so-called ghost was a scientist who learned to speed up his metabolism so he could give himself some sort of super-speed, to which someone else replies, "You mean, like that character "The Flash" in comic books?"
Terry Thirteen has met the Phantom Stranger, the Phantom Stranger has worked with the Justice League of which Flash is a member so Dr. Thirteen exists on Earth-1 that has the (Silver Age) Flash. While it is 'true' that Earth-1 also published a comic book about the exploits of the Golden Age Flash, I should imagine it would be more natural to reference the 'real life' superhero rather than a comic that hadn't been published since the 1940s.

Enemy Ace: War In Heaven
Why do the Germans sound more like Englishmen than Germans? Is Wanker a German insult? Somehow I doubt it.

This book has Von Hammer confiding with an old friend from WWI, but in the old series Von Hammer usually didn't confide in anyone.

Von Hammer refers to the black wolf he used to hunt with as a mastiff.

NNAN. He seems to think it was a figment of his imagination now.

The Phantom Stranger
All stories reprinted in Showcase Presents The Phantom Stranger Volume 2

Table of Contents
When listing the cover artist for Phantom Stranger #38 they misspell Jim Aparo's name as "Jjim Aparo".

Panic In The Night! The Phantom Stranger #23
NNAN. This issue lists Broderick Rune from issue 14 as having been an agent of the Dark Circle.
While it's not impossible for the Dark Circle to have been involved with the events of that story the group is not mentioned & their symbol not seen. Personally I would say Rashid was more likely to have been the Dark Circle agent than Rune as he taught Rune the spell to trap the Stranger.

Tannarak, the villain from issues 10, 11 & 17, is back, working this time for the Dark Circle (issues 20, 21, 22 & here) seems a bit out of character here what with all the "old chum", "old pal", & "old sport"s he tosses around.
I realize in issue 11 Gerry Conway mentioned he was a British child in Egypt, but that was over a 100 years earlier. (Len Wein is the writer here.) Not quite the evil character he was in the earlier issues.

Of course the Stranger is a bit out of character as well, asking Tannarak to accompany him & Cassandra in the battle against the Dark Circle.

Apocalypse The Phantom Stranger #24
More Briticisms from Tannarak, "old friend", "old chum", "old boy", "old sport". I suppose we should be grateful writer Len Wein didn't toss in any "hip hip, cheerio", "say what" or anything that Bertie Wooster might have said.

The Stranger seems to think Tannarak & Tala are dead.
Silly Stranger. Tala is an ancient force of evil that had been contained for centuries when she was unleashed in issue 4 & Tannarak has already come back from 3 apparent deaths.

Dr. Zorn: Soul-Master The Phantom Stranger #27
The Stranger knows that Dr. Zorn is using magical ingredients in his 'medicine', but he drinks the thing anyway???

Oddly enough, in his hallucination people call him the Phantom Stranger, although in issue 17 he said, "I was called by a name once" so he did have a name that could have been used.

The Counterfeit Madman! The Phantom Stranger #28
Mr. Trupin wonders why when Lemmick saw all the passengers on the plane as monsters he saw the Phantom Stranger as human.
When did the Phantom Stranger become a publicly known figure?

At the end it's revealed that Lemmick was faking the split personality & hysteria, however that doesn't really explain why his thoughts showed he was worried about what "Ganz" had told him.
Just a method actor or does he know he's a comic book character?

The Devil Dolls Of Dr. Z! The Phantom Stranger #29
We find out that Dr. Zorn had beaten the criminal rap from his activities in issue 27 because only one person was willing to testify against him & he managed to slip her a magical hallucinogen.
Excuse me? Dr. Z was treating three members of the Joint Chiefs & they tried to kill the president under his hoodoo. I should think the government would have this guy & his practices under a microscope or, if you lean toward government conspiracies, be behind his 'disappearance'.

The Children's Crusade! The Phantom Stranger #30
A police officer says, "The constitution guarantees freedom of religion! And they say they're a religion!"
Oh, is that all it takes? So if a bank robber told this idiot, "Robbing banks is my religion!" the cop would let him go?

It Takes A Witch!... The Phantom Stranger #32
Do mayors normally interview prospective librarians? I realize this is a small town where the mayor is also the undertaker, but I'd assume interviewing librarians would be done by someone else.

Deadman's Bluff! The Phantom Stranger #33
A federal agent wonders what happened to the Stranger & what he meant about Deadman.
Problem is the Stranger only mentioned Deadman's name at a point when he had stopped time & only Deadman could see or hear him.

The Demon Gate The Phantom Stranger #35
Ouch! The villain is Dr. N. Seine. Puns like that should be saved for comedies, not stories that are trying to be serious.

Death Calls Twice For A Deadman The Phantom Stranger #39
The Phantom Stranger says, "from whence", but whence means 'from where'.

Why did Deadman need to take over a body to go to Hong Kong? He should have been able to fly there as a ghost.

Stalker was a man who had sold his soul to the god of evil, war & warriors to become the best fighter in the world. The god Dgrth gives him these abilities, but takes his soul while he still lives. This ticks him off since he can no longer experience joy or triumph, etc., so he goes looking for the god to get his soul back. Dgrth sets up tests that he thinks will break Stalker to his will, but it just strengthens his resolve. Dgrth reveals that once a soul becomes a part of him he cannot give it back & that the only way to kill a god is to eliminate every mortal who believes in him. Stalker heads out to kill all his believers & Dgrth feels that at some point Stalker will get killed on his fool's quest & be under the god's power.
And the book got canceled after 4 issues unintentionally making it the first miniseries. (Really, had the book continued it would pretty much have just devolved into finding a new group of believers & killing them, so while it lacks a true conclusion it tends to work better as an open-ended standalone.)

Managed to pick up the four issues recently. Hadn't read the series since the '70s. Oddly enough I had thought that it was stated that the series was set in the past on Earth, but it's stated in a text piece at the end of the second issue that the series is set on another planet.

The Freezing Flames Of The Burning Isle Stalker #3
Page 6, Panel 3. Caption reads, "They walk swiftly cross the snowy beaches... passing without a glance miracles of nature or the gods that pilgrims would cross the globe to see."
Huh? Seems like there are things missing from that sentence.

Invade The Inferno Stalker #4
I always thought that Dgrth's telling Stalker how to destroy him was a mistake, but rereading it it comes off more as an impossible task rather than an attainable goal. So while it was a mistake (never tell anyone your weakness) it does fall into the arena of believability because of the god's arrogance.

All stories reprinted in Showcase Presents Adam Strange Volume 1
Back Cover reads, "Every 62 days, 16 minutes and 5 seconds archaeologist Adam Strange travels the earth to intercept the mysterious Zeta-Beam".
That was actually the number given for when the second Zeta-Beam would strike Earth. Showcase #19 mentioned that the first Zeta-Beam was a year earlier & there had only been 5 Zeta-Beams (one for each story so far).
Mystery In Space #54 stated the next beam would strike in 18 days.
Mystery In Space #55 had a beam strike 8 days, 3 hours & 41 minutes after the one he missed.
Mystery In Space #67 had a beam strike Earth 6 & a half days after the one Adam missed.
Mystery In Space #68 didn't specify the time ("some days later"), but it couldn't have been too long or Alanna would died from the fadeaway doom of the half-charge of the Zeta Beam.
Mystery In Space #72 had Adam lament that it would be a year before the next Zeta-Beam would strike Earth.
Mystery In Space #80 it would be three weeks before the next Zeta-Beam struck.

"Adam Strange bounces back and forth between his normal life on earth and his adopted planet Rann - always at the whim of the Zeta-Beam."
Not always. He used the Kai transporter in MIS #74 & Kanjor Ro's slave ship in MIS #75.
And for that matter glimpses of his 'normal life on Earth' tended to be few & far between.

General Stuff
The sheer number of times some menace strikes Rann at the same time as Adam arrives.
Okay sometimes he arrives after the menace, other times the menace waits for him, once he brought the menace with him, while twice he was brought to Rann because of the menace, but still it's amazing that all these menaces have avoided Rann for so long then their assaults usually coincide with Adam's appearance.
The writer does lampshade it occasionally & we do see some Rannians suspicious about it, but it would have been nice to have had mention of Adam spending a peaceful visit to Rann or even Rannian forces dealing with a menace while Adam was away just to break it up.

A couple of stories (MIS #53 & 63) indicate that if Adam didn't intercept the Zeta Beam that some people or things will get zapped to Rann.
Really makes Adam seem selfish those times he thinks he can stay on Rann permanently then. What's to keep Zeta Beams from randomly grabbing people & things then?

How the heck can Adam figure out exactly where on Earth the Zeta Beam will strike? General location, fine, Southern Hemisphere & the side of Earth facing Alpha Centauri at the given time, sure, but he's got it pinpointed to an amazingly small degree.

What's also amazing is how Alanna knows where on Rann Adam will appear. You'd think it would be the laboratory where the Zeta Beam was originally sent from, but it seems to be a different location every time.

Invaders From The Atom Universe! Showcase #18
The Vrenn have transferred the people of Rann to a sub-atomic world while they took over Rann. Adam finds these people came from a smaller sub-atomic world.
So is that a sub-sub-atomic world? I suppose nowadays some would say the came from a world of quarks or something like that.

Adam analyzes the machine they used to do this & discovered that it was fueled by phosphorus.
Phosphorus? In a sub-atomic world???

In some respects this story can be seen as a precursor to The Atom.

Challenge Of The Star-Hunter! Showcase #19
NANJAO. The events of the first story of Showcase #17 are said to have happened about a year earlier. The second story was said to be 62 days after the first & no mention of the time separating stories 3 & 4. I thought the writer was setting up the possibilities of missing stories until I read the next story which states that all the stories we've seen have been all the times he's been to Rann.

Flashback to the first story changes some dialogue.

Adam & the previous challengers of Leothric seem to think he will stop playing his deadly game if they destroy his spaceship.
While it's true his specialty was suspended animation there's no guarantee he doesn't know how to build a spaceship.

Mystery Of The Mental Menace!
Page 76. My copy of the Showcase Presents edition has some missing/misprinted letters.

Adam says the diamonds are only glass & they won't even scratch the gold coins.
I would say that's proof that the coins aren't gold, as glass is harder than gold & should scratch it. (Adam doesn't realize it's "fool's gold" until he runs an actual diamond against it.)

Page 9, Panel 4. Zakkad says "You curiosity would bring you to me!"
Your not you.

The Menace Of The Super-Atom! Mystery In Space #56
Page 3, Panel 1. Adam thinks, "The other times I've landed on Rann, Alanna's been waiting to meet me!"
Not the first three times she wasn't.

Why doesn't Adam think Nimar is Zakkad when they first meet? Both of them look like giant Ruthorfordian atoms.

Mystery Of The Giant Footprints Mystery In Space #57
Adam & Alanna fly over the Sea of Ybbs.
Interesting since the last time they were at the Sea of Ybbs it was on the planet Ardvak, not Rann.

In MIS #53 Orichalk was said to be a common mineral on Rann. Here Rhollians want to destroy the rare metal orichalkum.
Not necessarily the same thing, but the similarity of names is amazing.

For 20,000 years Rhollians have been seeking out islands that contain the rare metal, orichalkum, because they believe the radiation is causing each generation of their race to grow bigger & bigger, and they sink the islands since the metal is harmless underwater. Ten thousand years ago they sank the island of Atlantis.
1. Why don't they try living in underwater cities for a few generations?
2. How is orichalkum radiation on one planet supposed to harm a race on another?
3. Even if they destroy all orichalkum the radiation in space will continue for a long, long time. Admittedly one of these Rhollians is over 10,000 years old, but it seems like their species is most likely doomed.
4. Not another explanation for the sinking of Atlantis?!?!

Alanna worries that the sinking of the island known as Old Reliable will cause planetary quakes, great tidal waves, enough to destroy half of Rann.
Why? The island is called Old Reliable because it regularly sinks & rises. If the Rhollians permanently sink it would the water really go any higher than when it normally sinks?

Chariot In The Sky Mystery In Space #58
Adam is mentally counting down from 10, but he pauses in his counting to think things that would seem to take longer than a second & yet his countdown is timed right.

Jupiter, Apollo & Hercules have come to Rann thinking it is there planet of Olympia & that the Rannians have defeated their people.
By itself the idea that the Roman gods were space aliens isn't bad, however in a few months an issue of The Flash would have similar aliens from the planet Olimpus & then later when the Adam Strange series was established to take part in the same continuity as the Wonder Woman series with real Roman gods... errrrrrg...

The Duel Of The Two Adam Stranges! Mystery In Space #59
Adam has supposedly become a 50-foot giant (really a robot) & is attacking the city. Ranagar attacks with aircraft & missiles.
1. What about the dozen Griks robots Ranagar had in MIS #53.
2. Why not use the scale model Orkinomikrons to enlarge Ranagarian lawmen and/or warriors to fight the giant Adam Strange as giants?

The Attack Of The Tentacle World! Mystery In Space #60
The cover has a July cover date, but the Table of Contents of the Showcase Presents volume lists it as June. Don't have the actual issue so I don't know what the indicia says.

Sounds like a Japanese hentai.

Page 3, Panel 2. Alanna says, "We're just going to have fun while you here this time!"
Looks like the 'are' didn't print since there is room for it.

Page 3, Panel 4. The Kaanga seem like a most unwieldy animal. The basic design is like one-horned horses with just 2 legs... the front ones. Sure doesn't seem well-balanced that way & becomes even more ridiculous because there are people in armor riding these things. Unless they have a lighter than air gas in their butts I just can't see these animals as working very well.

Yggardis is a living world, with four tentacles that it uses to try to grab lifeforms so it can populate itself.
Either Yggardis is quite small, which might be the case given some of the perspectives we see, or those tentacles must be millions of miles long.
Also how does Yggardis keep from disrupting the orbits of the planets when it enters a system & why doesn't it seem to create earthquakes & tidal waves when nearing a planet?

Page 7, Panel 5. Adam says, "I know now why you've never been able to get any life to exist on your surface!"
In the background we see what look like plants.

The reason is Yggardis's mind gives off deadly radiation & the solution is to set explosives to separate the part with Yggardis's mind from the body. Adam does this, essentially making the mind the moon of the rest of the body.
1. Those must have been some explosives to blast about a quarter of the planet off itself & into a stable orbit.
2. Good thing the mind wasn't in the planet's core.

Adam seems to think that Yggardis will go off to a remote corner of space rather than becoming another planet in the Alpha Centauri system.
I suppose Yggardis could have started moving out from the system before Adam did this, but he & Alanna went up to Yggardis with jet packs & space suits, not a ship. If Yggardis was moving away from Rann, or had left the system entirely, how was Alanna supposed to get back? (Not to mention the radiation poisoning she's already suffered.)

Threat Of The Tornado Tyrant Mystery In Space #61
Ulthoon plans to take over Rann because of its mild climate, without hurricanes, tornadoes & extremes in temperature.
Well, I guess that explains why so many aliens want to take over it instead of Earth. ;-)
However would a milder overall climate without the seasonal extremes of Earth really be free of hurricanes & tornadoes?

Looking at the stars Adam figures out where he is & where the Zeta-Beam will pass by on its way to Earth.
Either he's Just That Good^OMT or he's incredibly lucky.

Okayyyyyyyyy... Adam was snatched off Earth by Ulthoon's teleport ray 12 hours before the Zeta-Beam was due to strike Earth. Xalthor was going to explode within the hour. Looking at the stars Adam realized that Xalthor was between Earth & Rann & close-enough to Earth so that the Zeta-Beam hadn't passed by yet, which would seem to indicate that Xalthar was only around 11 to 10 light hours away from Earth.
Seems rather close. You'd thunk astronomers might notice the explosion of a planet that close.

On Rann they see Ulthoon in a ship creating a deadly tornado, so they send out airships to shoot him down, but nothing seems to work. Turns out that the ship & person piloting it are illusions & Ulthoon is the living tornado.
Presumably Ulthoon was also making them think they were hitting the non-existent ship, but did he also hide any damage caused by those weapons as they passed through the ship & hit the ground?

The Radioactive Menace! Mystery In Space #64
A billion years ago evil scientist Carlon Zan is sentenced to eternal banishment. However he passes through a time-warp & arrives at present-day Rann & he decides to use the radiation he got from the time-warp to conquer Rann.
1. I'd love to know how he figured out he was one billion years in the future.
2. How does he even know there is any life on Rann to conquer? His first view of the planet's surface is the desert.

The Mechanical Masters Of Rann Mystery In Space #65
Alternate title: "The Humanoids with the Serial Numbers Ground Down". ;-)

Rannians are a surprisingly trusting race given all the invasions they've faced recently.

In MIS #54 Adam was accused of stealing weapons from the vault of Ranagar. This issue establishes the vault as being on Crater Island.
By itself, NNAN however when Adam & others go to get some weapons from here they leave from the Ranagar spaceport at night & make it there by dawn. Seems like a long journey for a "vault of Ranagar".

The invading aliens at the end of this story look quite similar to the Griks from MIS #53, but Adam calls them aliens implying they are a different race.
Well, given the number of human races on various planets I suppose it makes sense that other races would have their lookalikes...

Space-Island Of Peril! Mystery In Space #66
NNAN. Adam Strange was called to Australia as a paleontology expert, but usually Adam is shown to be an archeologist.

Challenge Of The Giant Fireflies! Mystery In Space #67
Alanna thinks what a cold winter night it is on Rann and a lake is frozen over.
Interesting since Ulthoon in MIS #61 said the Rann didn't have Earth's extremes in temperature.

Menace Of The Aqua-Ray Weapon! Mystery In Space #69
Adam says Alanna is always there to meet him.
Guess he forgot all those times she wasn't.

The Challenge Of The Crystal Conquerors! Mystery In Space #71
Page 6, Panel 3. "Vulnerabll".
That last L should have been an E.

The Multiple Menace Weapon! Mystery In Space #72
Adam is on his way to the museum with some artifacts, when a time beam transports him to New York of 101,961, & then to Rann of the same year. After defeating the future menace he's timeported back to present day Rann where he is able to stay for several months before the future Zeta-Beam wears off & returns him to Earth where he has ten minutes to catch the next Zeta-Beam.
1. The next Zeta-Beam was not supposed to strike Earth for almost a year & yet Adam only spent several months on Rann.
Anti-nit. The future Rannians didn't send him back to exactly when they grabbed him, but only to the period where Rann was under attack which could have been months later in 1961.
2. Adam vanished from his car while waiting for a traffic cop to wave him on.
You'd think that this year-long (more or less) disappearance would have some lasting repercussions. Traffic violation (leaving a car in traffic), a missing persons report, the museum wondering what the heck happened to Dr. Strange (must have been a doozy of a story when he next showed up). The only repercussion we actually saw was in MIS #77 when the police officer recognized Adam and demanded an explanation (Adam claimed he was transporting some ancient Chaldean magicians' artifacts & one must have worked it's magic on him.)

Shadow-People Of The Eclipse! Mystery In Space #78
Alanna uses the term Ranagarian quail.
Shouldn't Rann have its own names for its wildlife? Okay, maybe Adam used the term at some point not shown & Alanna used it because he did. Still lazy writing.

When Llyrr is knocked unconscious all the people kidnapped by Llyrr's eclipse teleporter return to where they were taken from because only Llyrr's mental powers were keeping them there. The Vantor who used the device on Rann for Llyrr try using the device again & Adam ensures that only they get caught in the beam. Since the Vantor didn't return immediately, Llyrr must have regained consciousness by then which seems a bit coincidental. (Coincidence in an Adam Strange story? I'm shocked!)

The Deadly Shadows Of Adam Strange! Mystery In Space #80
Adam returns to Earth, goes to one of his clothing caches where he keeps Earth clothes ready, & decides to examine the Zambebwe ruins nearby.
Does anyone ever question how he pops up in different locations all over the world without spending money for plane, train, or ship tickets & ends up inside countries without passing through Customs? He does not return to Earth from the same location he left, so unless he flies back to the last country he was seen in & leaves a paper trail someone sooner or later is going to get suspicious.

The Cloud-Creature That Menaced Two Worlds! Mystery In Space #81
Adam uses the cyberay to move the city of Parmaleen a mile or so away.
Oddly enough, Parmaleen is flat on the bottom & we see no evidence of water leakage from any severed pipes that you'd think would exist.

Adam & Alanna command each cyberay to destroy the other wiping both out of existence. Alanna comments that since Alva Xar is in prison he'll never be able to create anymore.
Yeahhhhhh... riiiiiiiiight... suuuuuure... it's not like previous mad scientists of Rann have been able to escape... oh, wait a minute...
1. Adam should have used the cyberay to erase the knowledge of how to build one from Alva's mind.
2. In this issue we learn that it was Alva whom, a 1000 years before, built the ultimate weapon from MIS #77. Alva is a Lex Luthor-league mad scientist.

World War On Both Earth And Rann! Mystery In Space #82
Akor Barth has won Scientist of the Year on Rann for his invention the can seek out both known & unknown types of radiation & reveal their source.
How exactly do you detect an unknown form of radiation? How would you register it? What do you measure it against?

It's revealed that there are hot tropic zones of Rann.
What about MIS #61 where it was said Rann had a mild climate without Earth's extreme temperatures?

Manlo Tallifa is using future weapons to try & conquer Earth.
Okay, so this guy can bring future weapons to the present, but wouldn't the pilots of the ray-bomb planes of World War V just ignore his commands?

Mention is made of a failure to contact the JLA assuming they are off in space or time, (probably referencing issue 18 of their mag, which came out 15 days after this issue, where they were shrunk down to the micro-world) however no mention is made of any of the other heroes on Earth like the Blackhawks, Challengers of the Unknown, Jimmy Olsen (in one of his superhero guises), or Hawkman (& probably others I'm not sure about).
Picky, picky, picky. They finally mention one group & I whine about others not mentioned. ;-) On the other hand it would have been amusing for the JLA to return from a mission to hear, "Don't worry, Sugar & Spike saved the day!"

This story reveals that there are underground pneumatic mail tubes between the various city-states of Rann.
Is that really more convenient than shipping the mail via flyer? Would pneumatic tubes really work over miles & miles?

Adam hangs on to the flying lens for several days until he returns to Earth to use it against an Earth menace.
1. Previous stories have mentioned there is a slight tingling before he returns, so all he needs to do is stay near it & grab it when he feels the tingling like he did with the threat in MIS #73.
2. There is no sign of bathroom facilities by the lens.

The Emotion-Master Of Space! Mystery In Space #83
Adam is hovering over the ocean waiting for the Zeta-Beam when a new island starts to rise up & takes his placer so he blasts a hole in it so he can catch the Zeta-Beam.
Why does he need to be at that exact spot? Previous stories (MIS #55, 61 & 67) have shown that the beam can be interrupted anywhere & teleports what it hits to Rann.

The Powerless Weapons Of Adam Strange! Mystery In Space #84
Page 3, Panel 1. The flashback to MIS #68 slightly alters Adam's words & turns them into thoughts instead.

Page 3, Panel 2. The flashback to MIS #70 only has one word different. That's pretty good for Gardner Fox.

Adam recalls a previous time the Zeta-Beam intercepted a creature before hitting Adam (MIS #55), but fails to recall the second time this happened (MIS #67).

The Haunted Tank
All stories reprinted in Showcase Presents The Haunted Tank Volume 2

Pull A Tiger's Tail! G.I. Combat #120
At the beginning of the story Jeb Stuart & his tank are moving slowly through the town where the other tanks accompanying him have been destroyed before getting stopped by the tiger tank. The flashback, however, has the action happening rather thick & fast with the last tank being blown up, Stuart's tank smashing through a building & encountering the tiger on the other side.

Page 16, Panel 4. The flashback has different dialogue from Page 3 & the German tank guy is missing the headphones he was wearing on Page 3.

Scratch That Tank! G.I. Combat #124
NNAN but it seemed odd. The Haunted Tank has just freed some G.I. prisoners from a German tank. Nothing is said that the German tank is in anyway damaged, but the freed G.I.s ride on the Stuart tank, which is much smaller & lighter.
Given how some previous stories have been based on trying to capture German tanks & how much more room there is to ride on the bigger German tank rather than the small Stuart tank I wonder why there wasn't an effort to get the German tank back to US lines?

Stay Alive--Until Dark! G.I. Combat #125
I see that title & feel the need to add, "& then you can die!" ;-)

Page 12. The tank is in a river surrounding the town, General Stuart points out a stationed German tank on a cliff to Jeb's right, so Jeb goes up the left bank and somehow ends up on the same side as the German tank.
Artist goofed up big time with that layout.

Mission - Sudden Death! G.I. Combat #127
Doesn't sound like the type of mission you want to succeed at. ;-) "Mission accomplished, we were all killed!" *thud*

The cover caption reads, "The crew of the Haunted T nk were on a mission of no return in the blazing "Kill That Tank!""
1. The missing A from Tank.
2. That's not the title the story inside has.

The tank crew works with Mlle. Marie to rescue a scientist held by the SS, who also happens to be her father.
Didn't we meet her father in The Brave And The Bold #52? Then again, maybe they really mean "sugar daddy" instead of father?

The Ghost Of The Haunted Tank! G.I. Combat #128
Normally they are careful not to print the rerun stories in the Showcase Presents editions, but this story was originally from G.I. Combat #95 (& printed in the previous Haunted Tank volume).

Page 11, Panel 1. The letters didn't print correctly.

Hold That Town For A Dead Man! G.I. Combat #129
NNAN, but something I wondered about. The tank is in this town trying to keep the Germans from retaking it & at one point they smash through a private residence to escape a tiger tank & I found myself thinking about where are the townspeople. Admittedly I should have thought about that in previous stories where they were smashing through buildings. On the other hand I can't really blame the townspeople for skedaddling when there's a battle going on, but still hundreds to thousands of people can't just easily disappear into the surrounding countryside so where & when they went is curious.

Another reprinting error. In the Showcase Presents edition the page 6 for this story is replaced with the page 6 from G.I. Combat #126.

Battle Of The Generals! G.I. Combat #130
Cover reads, "Attila the mightiest Hun of all... Emerges from he misty past to smash the Haunted Tank!"
Should be 'the misty past' not "he misty past".

The Devil For Dinner! G.I. Combat #131
Page 5, Panel 2. Jeb tells Slim to fire, but in Panel 4 he congratulates Rick on the shot.

The Executioner! G.I. Combat #132
Mlle. Marie tells The Executioner that he will "get a fair trial by a military court martial from the French Underground".
The French Underground was not military it was civilian.

The Iron Horseman! G.I. Combat #143
A soldier, Pops, needs a blood transfusion, but none of the Haunted Tank can donate because they are all O while Pops is AB.
Type O blood is the Universal Donor, AB is the Universal Receiver. Kanigher got it backwards.

Every Man Is A Fort! G.I. Combat #144
Okayyyyyy... in the first story Jeb's tank crew had been identified as "the Halcey cousins", but here their names are given as, Slim Stryker, Rick Rawler & Arch Asher.
What about the Halcey name?

Here, the crew are back to being Southerners (well, it is a flashback ;-) & they took offense at a Northerner being named Jeb Stuart.
So much for being childhood friends like in the first story.

Sun, Sand & Death! G.I. Combat #145
Wouldn't that title make great advertising copy? ;-)

Page 3, Panel 3. Caption reads, "Inside the furnace-like Stuart, claniging against Slim's, Rick's and Arch's eakdrums".
Claniging? Eakdrums?

Jeb sees a B-25 in the desert and wonders, "Am... am I due for a Section 8?"
Sees & talks to the ghost of a Civil War General, no problem. Sees a plane in the desert... he thinks he's cracking up!

Move The World G.I. Combat #146
A soldier says, "My name's Ulysses! No... not after Gen. Grant! After the ancient Greek G.I. who was kicked around for seven years... after his war ended!"
1. Ulysses is the Roman name for Odysseus.
2. Technically there was no Greece at the time.
3. Odysseus would have been the equivalent of a General, not a General Issue soldier.
4. It took him 10 years to get home, 7 of those years were spent on an island with the nymph Calypso. (Not quite what I'd describe as getting "kicked around".)

The Haunted Tank
Battle Prize! G.I. Combat #154 Reprinted in Showcase Presents The Haunted Tank Volume 2
In issue 150 the Stuart tank got blown up & they built a new tank from scrap parts at the depot. In this issue the German's capture the tank, see how ridiculous it looks and decide to parade it & the crew as a morale booster for the Germans. The resistance manages to free the tank & crew, get them to Russia & they start fighting, shooting the machine gun & firing the cannon.
At no point is it mentioned that the resistance or the Russians gave them ammunition & it's unlikely the Germans left it armed.

All stories reprinted in Showcase Presents Strange Adventures Volume 1

The World's Mightiest Weakling! Strange Adventures #54
Rodney Drake is a scrawny fellow, but Professor Milton is performing an experiment that increases his weight without changing his appearance. Of course this extra weight causes some problems like a chair & his bed collapsing under him, but somehow he doesn't have any problem, walking or moving, or even sinking into the ground. When he weighs a 1,000 pounds he walks on the beach without sinking. Later as he gets heavier he fights wrestlers, but the ring stays up. At one point he outweighs a ten-ton elephant.

Interplanetary Camera!
Professor Thorton spots a finned tube & knows immediately that it is a super-hydrogen bomb & quickly deactivates it.
Given that it was built & planted by aliens, that's an amazing bit of intuition.

In this story Mercury has one side always facing the sun, with a race of Sun-Men who live there & a race of Darkmen who live on the darkside. There are also lakes & plants & animals.
Science Marches On.

The Day The Sun Exploded! Strange Adventures #55
The sun becomes white & the Earth starts heating up. Believing the sun has gone nova & that things will continue to get hotter construction is begun on refrigi-houses capable of accommodating 50,000 people. Within a few days the first of these are completed & people start going into them.
No way in heck could something like that be accomplished in a few days.

Planes start making ice runs to the Arctic.
The whole story is about how unbelievably hot the world is becoming & there is still ice in the Arctic???

In less than a month drinking water was scarce & rationed because of evaporation.
And yet there is still ice in the Arctic.

A water guy says, "One quart each every 24 hours".
I think there's a missing ampersand there.

The oceans were drying up & liners could not reach the docks.
People are still taking cruises? Also there is still ice in the Arctic! (It's a plot point.)

Scientists discover that the sun didn't explode, but a volcano in the Arctic threw up particles into the air making the sun appear to change color as well as magnifying the heat & preventing it from radiating out into space. As soon as the volcano is extinguished, with a bomb burying it in ice, the heat immediately starts dropping.
Why would the temperature start dropping? The particles should still be in the air for some time.

Explorers Of The Crystal Moon! Strange Adventures #56
Page 2, Panel 6. Siwwe is missing his antennae.

One of the aliens says, "These Earthmen read instead of being read to by robot-readers telepathically! What a waste of time!"
Sooooooo... the aliens think being told a story is better than actually reading? Makes me wonder if the aliens can read?

The improved alien version of TV is called a "Hypnocast" & completely immerses the viewer into thinking they are in the story.
1. Hypnocast sounds rather threatening.
2. Must make for some interesting situations. Murder mysteries where YOU are the victim! War drama where YOU are on the front lines! Porn where YOU... eh, you know.

The Sculptor Who Saved The World!
Mysterious objects are appearing in the studio of sculptor Paul Paxton. Patrons think they are imaginative sculptures & buy them. It turns out these are actually weapons from the year 2265 accidentally being teleported backward through time.
Good thing no one accidentally triggered any of them while looking at or moving them.

These weapons are needed by Earth to fend off an alien invasion.
Are these weapons prototypes? Because one would assume that to defend a whole planet you'd need thousands to millions of such weapons. Not to mention having the method to recreate the weapons as well.

The story skips over how the artist got back all of his "sculptures" from the people who bought them.

The Spy From Saturn Strange Adventures #57
The cover gives the distance to Saturn as 800 million miles, while the story has 390 million miles.

Saturnians plan to invade Earth, by disguising one of their own as a Earth scientist using a duplicating machine. Surprisingly the Earthling manages to overcome the Saturnian even though his muscles should be stronger because of Saturn's greater gravity.

Prisoner Of Two Worlds
Darwin Jones of the Department of Scientific Investigation has been warned of an alien criminal who has come to Earth to steal a weapon that will allow him to conquer his world. Going to the landing site they try to arrest Kren for illegally entering the country & deporting him as an undesirable alien. Kren claims he is on his native world as he had been born on Earth when his parents landed here years ago & offers photographic proof & Jones & the DSI have to let him go.
1. How can you prove it photographically? Sure he might have photos of a baby being born on this world, but how does he prove it's actually him? Not mention the possibility of faking the photos.
2. Even if he was born here did he have permission to fly through Earth airspace? Where's his passport? Doubtless there are plenty of other laws that could be used to hold him.

They try to arrest him for destruction of public property (ripping a page out of a library book), but it turns out he had created a duplicate page instead.
So now he's violating Copyright law.

The weapon Kren stole? A book of matches. Torg's atmosphere is almost pure oxygen so all he had to do was threaten to light a match to become dictator.
1. Is it possible to have a world of almost pure oxygen? It is pretty reactive. Which is why an oxygen atmosphere is considered indicative of a life-bearing planet as on dead worlds the oxygen combines with other elements very quickly.
2. Of course, Kren didn't need a match, just something to produce a spark would do.

Across The Ages! Strange Adventures #60
In 2155 the historical society corrects mistakes in the history books by bringing forth the famous people of history.
Awfully trusting that they think the answers will be 100% accurate.

Page 3, Panel 6. The word people is missing the L.

The Man Who Remembered 100,000 Years Ago!
A freak accident has opened up a science teacher's racial memories of life 100,000 years ago. One of the things he remembers is that a day is equal to 15 hours.
They had created the concept & length of an hour 100,000 years ago???

World At The Edge Of The Universe!
Since the point of this story is to show that humans don't know a lot about the universe I suppose attempting to pick some of the nits is redundant.

However... Ted is worried about the ship about to collide with a meteor, but Kyp explains that it's an eggshell meteor, hollow with a thin shell.
1. In space they should be called meteoroids, not meteors.
2. Given the damage that micro-meteoroids can do to ships in space, flying through eggshell meteors seems not to be a good idea.

The Thermometer Man Strange Adventures #61
Jark of Neptune absorbs electricity like plants absorb sunshine, but this makes it sound like he should be absorbing electricity whenever it's present, but if that were the case he would have absorbed the energy from the helicopter engine when Hal found him.

The Fireproof Man Strange Adventures #62
This is the cover story, but the cover scene, a scientist & his dog in a burning lab with firemen amazed they are not burning, does not appear in the story.

Page 2, Panel 1. Ken's word balloon is pointing to the alien.

Page 5, Panels 3 & 4. Ken's mind has been switched with his dog Prince's. To communicate with his partner, Hank, he gets a paintbrush & writes on the wall.
The topmost words look too high for the dog body to reach.

The aliens came from a world in a far-off galaxy because their normally hot world has cooled down, they found Mercury too hot & Venus too cold, but they figure they can set Earth on fire & live on the moon.
1. At least, two whole galaxies to explore for a suitable planet & this plan was the best they could do?
2. Obviously this was written before scientists knew just how hot Venus really was.
3. How would setting the Earth on fire heat up the moon?

Ken managed to get a formula for liquid asbestos from the alien minds (yeah, telepathy came with the mind switch) and Hank makes it up & he & Ken in Prince's body drink it.
1. Why would aliens from a hot flaming world have a formula for liquid asbestos?
2. What kind of dangerous side effects would this have on Hank & Prince?

The Emperor Of Planet X
John Abbot, a handyman for a scientific institution, has a special jacket that he carries various things in for the scientists when they need them. One of these is what appears to be a little glass vial filled with "liquid air".
Usually liquid gases are in bigger tanks as I don't think that vial would have enough room for a vacuum seal.

Invasion From Inner Space!
Two zoologists discover a unique echo valley that repeats voices from the past. The first echo is from 1870 & as the scientists call out the answering echoes move forward in time.
Sooooooo why didn't the first 'echo' get used up when the second echo was made & so on & so on.

The Watchdogs Of The Universe
The Watchdogs of the Universe secretly cap a volcano to keep it from erupting.
Since eruptions are based on pressure buildup below the summit, all this is doing is creating a potentially more explosive eruption.

Two issues ago a story said that Meteor Crater formed 100,000 years ago, this story says 5,000 years ago.
Which is it?

The planet Arcturia is half land & half water & a giant tidal wave is threatening the civilization.
If giant tidal waves are possible then shouldn't this have been a recurring threat? So much so that the civilization either wouldn't have formed or would have adapted to the recurrent menace.

The Watchdogs of the Universe secretly create a dike to stop the wave.
That must create some interesting unanswered questions to the people on that world.

Subsurface quakes are splitting the planet Dorth in two, so the Watchdogs use a giant harpoon needle with a super-strong thread to sew up the crack.
Doesn't really deal with the actual threat though.
Another website estimated that it would take 224,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 joules of energy to blow up the Earth. It takes the sun a week to produce that much energy. So the idea that a planet will blow itself to pieces seems much more farfetched than this story's author thought.

The central sun of a solar system has burned out. An idea is to use some H-Bombs to rekindle it. It works.
As I understand it a sun burns out when all the lower elements have been burned up leaving only the heavier elements behind. Unless those H-Bombs can somehow convert the heavier elements to lighter elements, it ain't gonna work.

The Watchdogs do their work secretly because if worlds knew of their organization they would come to depend on the Watchdogs to always save them & have no incentive to solve their own problems.
So why help them at all? You don't think that these mysterious miracles won't result in people believing that something is watching out for them? Protecting them from the most dangerous threats?

I Was The Man In The Moon! Strange Adventures #63
Ken Peters is an auto mechanic when the moon's features change to his face & people are shocked by this. One night moonmen communicate with him & tell him they did that & are causing disasters around the Earth so that Ken will be a pariah, because the Moonavac, an infallible computer, predicted that in ten years he will build a rocket ship that will reach the moon & they don't want to be invaded.
Moon landing in 1965? Not too far off. Although, in the real world, I think their plan would more likely make a celebrity of Ken rather than a pariah. (And just imagine the money the Moonmen will make in advertising! ;-)

When Ken tells the Moonmen that even machines can make mistakes the moonman says, "Not Moonavac! It is powered by atomic fuel".
So what? Mistakes aren't made by the power source.

The FBI show up investigating the tip that Ken is planning to make himself a dictator & that he caused the change in the moon & the worldwide disasters as a test of his scientific powers.
Yeesh! And again there are people would want to be friends with a man who had that kind of power. Just look at all the people who admire dictators like Castro & Noriega & other despicable works of humanity.

Gorillas In Space! Strange Adventures #64
This is the cover story, but the cover is a lie. The cover has gorillas gloating that they beat man into space, but in the story the 'gorillas' claim they were humans changed to gorillas by cosmic rays, although (Spoiler! Highlight to read!) they're really aliens pretending to be humans who were changed to gorillas.

The Maze Of Mars
Garr says he is from "the distant planet, Canopus".
Canopus is a star.

The canals of Mars are really a maze to confuse invading armies.
1. Science marches on. There are no canals on Mars.
2. Don't armies usually have explody devices that can be used to blow holes in walls? ;-)
3. The maze wasn't really that confusing as the tunnels came in three shapes, circles, triangles & squares, & by following one shape you can get out.

Garr's friend Torr got lost in the maze.
Not much of an explorer if he doesn't know enough to mark the trail he took.

The Man Who Discovered The West Pole!
An electric comet passed near Earth giving off powerful electric sparks & as a result science has gone haywire: a telescope acts like a microscope; a simple leap sends a footballer soaring through the air; the hotter a stove gets the colder the food gets; in one area sound stops transmitting through the air; some steel cars turn to rubber; rain goes upward, the painting the Blue Boy turns green, sparrows grow to giant size; a ship sails sideways & a town starts sinking when the ground turns to ooze. Paul Gibson remembers an Egyptian legend of West & East Poles & goes to find the West Pole. He theorizes that these poles turn Earth into a giant battery & that their current had been reversed by the electric comet & this turned science topsy-turvey.
Uhhhhhhhhh... yeahhhhhhh...

The Earth Drowners!
Invaders from Venus plan to flood the Earth because their oceans are too crowded for their civilization.
The is no water nor civilization on Venus.

Don Grayson has been 'hypnotized' into planting the devices that will melt the ice caps & flood the world & while he can't stop himself from doing that he realizes that he can change what he does so he puts the last controller in dry ice which alters the signal so instead of melting the ice caps it makes the water colder so the Venusians return home thinking Earth is an unsuitable place to live.
Actually the ocean bottom is pretty cold already, kept cool by Earth's polar ice caps.

The Prisoner From Pluto! Strange Adventures #65
Zar Kull, a man from Pluto, is trying to warn Earth of an invasion by Saturn, by using a brain converter he can switch his mind with another. After giving up trying to warn them he goes to the ocean, for the Saturnians are underwater, & first switches minds with a gull, then a whale. After stopping the invasion he returns to the beach & switches his mind back to the human he had used to get to the beach.
So that means there is now a gull with the mind of a whale & a whale with the mind of a gull.

The Rock-And-Roll Kid From Mars!
A reference to the water in the canals of Mars.

The Human Battery! Strange Adventures #66
This is the cover story, but the dialogue about how he can't spend the rest of his life on an insulated platform is definitely misleading. In the actual story a doctor tells the guy that if he's not at the hospital within three hours he'll be dead, but the man has a job he has to accomplish first. Staying on an insulated platform isn't part of the story.

Detective John Westbrook is taking some X-Rays of a gun when the machine explodes & charges the detective with electricity.
Errrrr... yeah.....

He sprays his suit with a rubber solution to keep from shocking anyone, however a cat comes close to him & it's hair stands on end from his electricity.
He was a lot closer to the two crooks in the car, so why didn't their hair stand on end?

NNAN but I found it odd. Detective Westbrook has been working undercover as Johno Keyman. When he finally meets the kingpin of crime in Metro City he's given a lie detector test and asked if Johno Keyman is his real name.
What I found amusing is how many criminals always use their real name? He could have said, "No, I started using it because the police know my real name!" & not risked lying on that question.

Apparently the electricity in his body kept the machine from registering his lies, so it really didn't matter.

He grabs a telephone wire & shocks the crooks with it.
I've heard that telephone wires don't conduct electricity so this seemed odd, but I don't know if what I've heard was just a myth or not.

The Martian Masquerader! Strange Adventures #67
The story starts off in the editorial offices of Strange Adventures with the editor Mr. Black.
*snicker* Julius Schwartz. Must be set on a parallel Earth as he's using a different last name. ;-)

This story reveals that Earth, for the last few centuries, was placed under the protection of Mars by the Solar Council & it was their job to 'raise Earth' & that with thought-suggestion they have been helping us "invent" things like the airplane, radio, electric light, nuclear power, hydrogen bombs...
Wait, what? What other weapons of mass destruction did they have us "invent" & what exactly were they grooming our planet to become?

The main character, Kobir, realizes that Humans no longer need Martian help when a professor invents a nerve-paralyzer, a weapon that is not scheduled to be thought-suggested for another 50 years.
Another weapon, eh?
On an amusing note, this story was published 53 years ago & yet, I don't believe, we actually have a nerve-paralyzer type ray gun... yet.

Search For A Lost World
Page 2, Panel 5. The caption reads, "It was no planet Nila had glimpsed..." & Vern says, "It's a runaway planet from outer space"
So it is a planet. The funny thing is the caption is Vern narrating what had happened before the story began, so he's contradicting himself.

The Man Who Couldn't Drown! Strange Adventures #68
Paul Browning survives two hours underwater in the ocean, later he's tested by scientists, but he can only survive underwater if the water is a salty as seawater.
Does seawater really have a consistent salt level all over the world?

Paul stays in a tank for a 100 hours.
There doesn't appear to be a toilet in that tank...

It's said that Paul was born 27 years ago to ordinary parents, but when he writes his farewell note to the surface it's addressed to the science institute, not a word to any friends or family.
Might have been more interesting had friends & family members been shown adding some additional drama to the story.

Reading the story Aquaman obviously came to mind, one could almost see it as an alternate origin story, especially when one realizes that it would be 3 years before Aquaman's writers would rewrite his origin to establish his mother had come from Atlantis. (Originally Aquaman was a surface dweller who learned to breathe underwater.)

Strange Gift From Space!
Bob Fallon encounters an alien, with a cracked space helmet, having trouble breathing Earth air. Later he saves the alien again, but this time the alien was wearing a combination human face mask & breathing device.
Okayyyyyy... one would think the flow of alien air to the helmet would limit how much Earth air gets in, but later he's standing there with his face mask/breathing device completely off & not having any trouble breathing.

After saving the alien's life the first time the alien tells him he will give him a gift an ability that the alien once could do, but not any more & uses the alien word Escran. Bob wonders what it could be. One of the things he imagines is that it might be immortality.
How could the alien have been immortal, but not anymore?

After saving the alien's life a second time the alien reveals that he was here as a spy for a potential invasion, but that he'll tell his superiors that humans deserve their freedom.
Why would aliens invade a world they couldn't breathe the air of?

The Balloons That Lifted A City!
A scientist has accidentally discovered a formula for anti-gravity. When checking his chemicals he discovers that the factory that produced them used the rest of their supply in making balloons, so he's been gathering balloons to extract the element he needs. At the end of the story he comments that he's used up all of his formula, unless he can find some more of those balloons.
Errr... if you know what the chemical formula is, why do you need the balloons?

A tidal wave is heading for Island City where, coincidentally, the scientist happens to be & he uses his formula to raise the island above the tidal wave.
How he's able to lift several miles worth of island while based in his lab is not explained.

After the tidal wave has passed he has to set the island down again, also readjust the position of the island since it had turned about 5 degrees.
Okay, I can swallow up & down movements, but how does an anti-gravity formula turn something sideways?
Also, given that the island was sheared off its foundation how exactly do you set it down exactly the way it was?

The Gorilla Conquest Of Earth! Strange Adventures #69
Edward Smith invents a time machine & then sets the controls for 5,000,000 BC thinking that would be a real test of his machine.
I'd think most people would start off with a smaller jump just to see if it worked first.

As he goes back in time his features start becoming more gorilla-like as he travels backward along the evolutionary scale.
While Humans & gorillas had a common ancestor they were different branches of the simian tree.

He starts forward again & stops in 1,500,000 BC where gorillas, wearing clothes & bearing rayguns, are masters of the Earth.
Uhhhhhh... yeahhhhhhh...

Fortunately Edward is able to speak to the humans of that time.
How?

He leads the humans in an uprising & imprisons the gorillas.
So how did the gorillas lose their intelligence & why did humans stop using the gorilla weapons?

The Museum From Mars
The usual assortment of we know better now nits. Canals, cities, large animals, vegetation, etc. on Mars.

The Man With Four Minds!
The old nonsense of humans only using 10% of their brain again.

Mark Barrett has his brain stimulated so he can do four things at once, such as paint with his left hand, read a book, watch TV & write with the right hand.
How can he do this when he's only got 2 eyes?

Mark wakes up to discover his right hand was writing while he slept.
Must have looked a mess since, I imagine, his eyes were closed while sleeping.

Earth's Secret Weapon! Strange Adventures #70
Earth captures two aliens both of which claim to be friends of Earth & warning them that the other alien's race is planning an invasion & has planted a device that make Earth's atomic weapons powerless.
Several stories in this collection have aliens afraid of Earth's atomic weapons. Seems rather ludicrous that otherwise highly advanced technological races don't have some defense against it.

The aliens are locked up until the Department of Scientific Investigation can figure out which alien is telling the truth.
My how times have changed. Nowadays idiots would be insisting that the aliens have rights & should be allowed to go free instead of locking them up.

The Mechanical Mastermind
John Gardner invents a device that can plant images & events in people's minds & decides that the best thing to do is give it to the government.
Man the writer had a lot of trust in the benevolent nature of politicians & beaurocrats.

Menace Of The Martian Bubble!
200 years in the future, Mars attempted invasion of Earth has failed. They decide to send troops back in time to 1956 when Earth's science is less advanced & conquer it then.
Well, since Mars didn't rule Earth in 2156, it's pretty obvious that their attempt to invade the past will also fail.

It's said that the Martian force bubble destroys everything in its path (kind of like a bull dozer).
However you can see some things inside the bubble like pieces of wall & a lamppost.

The Martians are able to go through the force field because the uniforms are made of "a strange form of solidified carbon dioxide".
Isn't that dry ice? Also makes me wonder if humans could have entered the bubble by increasing the amount of pollution? ;-)

Earth soldiers dressed in solidified carbon dioxide *snicker* enter the bubble, & destroy the force field generator while the Martians escape.

Okayyyyyy... if Mars had tried & failed to invade Earth in 1956, then why didn't this spur Earth's space program with the intent of taking the fight back to Mars?

Raiders From The Ultra-Violet! Strange Adventures #71
Inventor Tod Knox has created a new gemstone that causes primary colors within a few feet of him to "jump down" two spaces on the color spectrum, so blue becomes yellow, yellow becomes red, green becomes orange, etc. At one point he says that "it affects the spectrum's primary colors only-- not the intervening colors! Otherwise my skin's color would have changed!"
Usually primary color refers to red, yellow, blue, but the author means the 7 colors of the rainbow.
Frankly it doesn't make sense that only some colors would be affected by the gem's 'prism effect', but maybe the colorists would have had problems if they had to color everything differently?

Coincidentally, plutonium is mysteriously going missing & one of the raiders walks by Tod & he realizes the invaders are from "the ultra-violet dimension of space".
Yeahhhhh...

Oddly enough the aliens are intangible as well as being invisible to ordinary human eyes. (They have a device that makes the plutonium intangible as well.)

Tod wears some orange garments, which his ring shifts down to infra-red, making him invisible to the aliens.
How does he know the aliens can't see infra-red?

Tod makes another, bigger gem under the greatest pressure possible & shifts the alien spaceship "two steps beyond the red-- into the infra-infra red! They will never menace us again!"
How can he be so sure? I don't think infra-infra red actually exists. This still doesn't get the stolen plutonium back. Heck, the army might just assume that the "spaceship" was an illusion he created to cover up the 'real' thefts.

The Amazing Rain Of Gems! Strange Adventures #73
The cover makes the inventor look evil, but inside he's a nice guy.

NANJAO. Page 2, Panel 3, the caption reads, "in an eastern coastal city". Page 4, Panel 3 reveals the city's name is... "Eastern City".
Wow! How did they think that one up?!? ;-)

Inventor Robert Arnold is working on a force field device to block guided missiles & he decides to test it before telling anyone & checking that no aircraft are due over the city, turns on his device.
How exactly he planned to test his force field is never actually explained or even mentioned. Did he have another lab where he would launch guided missiles at the city? Or was he just gonna wait & watch for birds to smack up against it?

After turning on he device a rain of faceted gems descends on the city. People in the street are identifying the various gems as ruby, diamond, sapphire & amethyst.
Are these trained gemologists? Ten to one they are just looking at the color & guessing. Also how did the gems get faceted?

The gems are telepathic & command the people who picked them up to take them to a central location where the gems merge into one giant gem which wants to take over the world.
Yeahhhhhhhhhhhh... where to start?
1. Where did The Gem get its desire to rule the world? I mean really, these intelligent, telepathic gems were only just created, apparently, & yet they immediately know they want to rule the world. What ambition, what planning, what drive... Frankly it's so unlikely they should have had a panel revealing that the gems were created by aliens who were secretly using these gems to conquer the world. Sadly they didn't do that.
2. The merging of all the little gems into one big one. The reprint is in black & white unfortunately, so I have no idea what color(s) were used for The Gem. However the previous identifications indicate that there are some red stones, clear stones, blue stones & purple stone which would probably result in a darker colored stone.

A news report says that there has been no contact with Eastern City, that no one can enter or leave & that airplanes sent to investigate have disappeared.
1. If they can't contact anyone in the city then how do they know no one can leave?
2. It sounds like there's a force field around the city, although Arnold had turned off the device shortly after turning it on because of a problem.
3. What happened to the airplanes was not explained, if they did crash into a force field then why did no one find the wreckage? Did the force field disintegrate the planes? Were the pilots mentally taken over by The Gem & forced to land?

Arnold hypothesizes that maybe his projector caught traces of minerals in the air & condensed them into crystalline gems.
I could accept the idea that his device collected & crystallized minerals in the air (although the amount of minerals in the air would bother me) however I can't accept his device forming them into shapes that only a faceter could produce.

After stopping The Gem, Arnold destroys his device so he doesn't accidentally create something like The Gem again.
Personally, I'm not sure his device really did create it. He really should have waited till he got more information before deciding his machine was truly responsible.

Science-Fiction Convention On Mars!
A Martian explains that interplanetary travel by spaceship can't happen (they use teleportation), every ship they've sent up is destroyed by "mysterious ultrasonic rays in space".
UltraSONIC rays in AIRLESS SPACE??? Yeah, that is mysterious.

Reverse Rescue Of Earth!
Testing his time machine, David Lanning goes 2044 years into the future to the year 4000.
Why so far? Wouldn't it make more sense to try a small time jump first?

Going so far into the future has used up more of his fuel than he thought.
Didn't think to bring some extra with you?

In the year 4000 he discovers that he is a hero for saving the Earth back in the year 2500 & the people want him to save them because the old menace is back.
Geeze didn't anyone in 2500 think to write down what David did to drive back the Fieries?