Action Comics 405, "Bodyguard or Assassin?"

Action Comics 405, "Bodyguard or Assassin?"

  October 1971
Cover: Neal Adams & Dick Giordano
Writer: Cary Bates, Artists: Curt Swan & Murphy Anderson
In this imaginary tale, set an unspecified number of years in the future, Superman is summoned to the White House, where he's subjected to a security scan before being admitted to see the President (a fictitious chief of state, who somewhat resembles an older Superman with white hair at the temples... not unlike the President whom Superman impersonated in Action 371).
It seems that a small globe-shaped paperweight on the President's desk has been replaced with a duplicate containing a miniature tape recorder, which has been repeating the same message every five minutes: "I am Marsepun -- I will assassinate you before 9:00 tonight -- Escape is impossible no matter how far you go or where you hide -- *click*" At 9:00, the President is scheduled to sign the Uniworld Peace Treaty, which calls for global nuclear disarmament, something the mystery assassin seems determined to stop. General Trevis, chief of the presidential security force, has suggested that Superman act as the President's bodyguard for the next 12 hours, at Tonacom, a secret top security installation in the southwest.
Superman wraps the President in his cape and files him to a hidden tunnel in the southwestern desert. A huge steel door closes behind them as they descend a mile below the surface and enter an immense vault. This is Tonacom. General Trevis confirms their arrival by video screen, and from the Pentagon remotely activates the defense features in the passage that the pair just descended... jets of molten steel, pockets of lethal gas, rings of pulsing radioactive isotopes, and more.
Soon after, the communication link to the Pentagon cuts out. A blip in a radar screen shows that someone or something has broken through the hidden tunnel entrance and is descending towards Tonacom. The walls are lead-lined, so Superman's X-ray vision can't see through them, and he refuses to leave the President's side... but a closed circuit monitor to the surface shows handprints on the rocks at the entrance... prints that match Superman's.
The blip on the screen advances past a dozen lethal traps. On a hunch, Superman uses the equipment in the complex to analyze the voiceprint of the recording that the assassin made... and finds that it matches his own! It then occurs to him... "Marsepun" is an anagram of "Superman!" Is the Man of Steel mentally unstable? Could he be the assassin?
In the Pentagon, General Trevis watches all this on a secret monitor, and laughs. He is in reality one of two Gemini agents planted in the White House by an organization anxious to start World War III. He created the recording by splicing tapes of Superman's voice, planted the duplicate handprints, tampered with the radarscope, and, via a hidden device in Tonacom, has been broadcasting electro-impulses into Superman's brain to prevent him from thinking clearly. His intention is to drive Superman mad, and turn him into the President's killer!
Back at Tonacom, the President tries to reinforce Superman's confidence by reminding him of the great feats he's performed in the past... hurling the Washington Monument into space when a nuclear bomb containing Virus X had been planted there, and reconstructing it later... battling the Cgno Beast from another galaxy, which had five times his strength... but nothing helps. Meanwhile, Trevis hops onto a jet so he can be at Tonacom when the end comes. He takes a hidden elevator down to the bunker, where he sets up a movie camera to record the scene through a two-way mirror.
The radarscope shows the intruder to be 97 feet away, and Superman is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Range... 36 feet... 21 feet... 8 feet... as thge tension grows on Superman's face. There is a deafening pounding, and the huge, reinforced steel door buckled and falls inward. Superman turns to face... himself, in a large mirror in the doorway. "I AM MARSEPUN! I AM YOUR KILLER!" he screams. "I must carry out my threat!" As he turns, the President draws a "gamma gun" given to him by General Trevis to protect himself. But the beam ricochets off of Superman's chest, striking the President. Trevis is pleased that not only has he tricked the President into killing himself, but he has a film reel that will destroy Superman's reputation as a hero.
But Superman has not gone unaffected by the gamma blast, as he suddenly explodes into a shower of gears and transistors. As Trevis enters the room, the robot explains that he was filling in for Superman, who had to go save a solar system in another galaxy from an exploding comet. Trevis is unfazed. The President is dead, and Trevis still has a film of what appears to be Superman attacking him. Trevis activates the destruct mechanism in the complex to destroy the evidence, and leaves in his jet to report to his superiors. But they reject his report, saying only that their data indicates the mission was a failure... and as an ominous shadow falls across the cockpit, a lethal beam leaps from the telephone's mouthpiece to Trevis's heart.
The President examines the General's body, and confirms that he is dead. He then removes his own disguise to reveal that he is Superman, and uses his microscopic vision to track the radio impulses from the phone call to their source. Along the way, he recalls how the President confided that he had been suspicious of Trevis for months, and when Superman examined the gamma gun, he confirmed that it was booby-trapped. So he disguised himself as the President, and manipulated the robot with a palmed remote control device and super-ventriloquism. He traces the call to a lone phone booth on a tiny outcropping of rock off the Pacific coast, which explodes as he arrives at it.
Superman recalls that he heard Trevis refer to himself as "Gemini Agent 1" when reporting to his superiors, and wonders if that implies another agent close to the President. Back at the White House, the President's personal secretary hands him a stack of Congressional reports that he needs to review...
Cary Bates set up a double safety net, by setting this story in a possible future AND stating that it was "imaginary." I don't understand why. There have been fictitious Presidents used in Superman stories before; no major characters were killed or otherwise compromised; and the technology in the story was not very advanced compared to the mainstream DC universe of the time. The only factor I can see that might have influenced that decision was the signing of the global disarmament treaty... and that could have easily been replaced with a more plausible diplomatic assignment.
"The Red Dust Bandit!"
Writer: Don Cameron, Artist: Howard Sherman
Originally appeared in Action Comics 192 (May 1954)
The Vigilante and his partner, Stuff, are chasing a bandit through Red Dust County. The bandit gets away, but loses a saddlebag, in which the Vig finds what appears to be a safe combination. The bandit slips into town and changes his clothes, and discovers that he's a dead ringer for Greg Sanders, the Prairie Troubadour, who's scheduled to perform the next night.
Next day, the Vig, in his other identity as Greg Sanders, arrives in town, and is abducted by the bandit, who intends to take his place. The impostor can't sing, but he plays a mean guitar, so he performs on stage claiming that he's hoarse from a cold. He locks Sanders and Stuff in his hideout, a cave with a steel door. Greg realizes that the combination he found is for the lock on the door, so he escapes and catches the impostor in an act of burglary. Suddenly, he realizes that he can't admit that he knew "Greg" was a phony without giving his own identity away, so he apologizes for mistaking Sanders for an outlaw.
Some days later, the Vig and Stuff manage to catch the bandit in the act of robbing a carnival moneybox, and chase him through the mountains. Then they take a shortcut and beat him back to the hideout, changing back to Greg and Stuff. (Hey... Stuff never wore a mask, and wore the same clothes whether he was with Vigilante or Greg Sanders. How come no one ever noticed that?) Later, when the impostor returned to the carnival, Greg Sanders showed up and threw a pie in his face. He claimed that the Vigilante had followed the outlaw to his hideout and dynamited the door to free him. Not knowing which was the real Greg Sanders, the townspeople suggested a musical showdown. Problem is, the impostor could play but not sing, and Greg, who injured his arm in the mountain chase, could sing but not play. So the sheriff decided to hold both of them until the Vigilante could show up to identify the phony. Just then, the Vig drove by on his motorcycle, shouting that he didn't have time to stop, but that the real Greg Sanders was the one next to the sheriff. Greg breathed a sigh of relief, as we see Stuff, crouched alongside the cycle, saying that he'd better get this dummy back to the store window and come back to pick up Greg.
"The Haunted Island!"
Writer: Jack Miller, Artist: Ramona Fradon
Originally appeared in Adventure Comics 206 (November 1954)
An excursion boat taking a group of happy kids to a picnic on Fun Island hits a reef, and can't continue. There's another island alongside the reef, but it's covered with trees and rocks, and there's no place to play ball. Aquaman shows up, and offers the kids a chance to play their games on the water.
The Sea King organizes a baseball game, with a raft as home plate, tortoises as bases, an octopus umpire, and each player riding a sea cow. But when one player chases a fly ball towards the island, he spots a horrifying swamp monster in the lagoon. But nobody, not even Aquaman, will believe his story.
Next, Aquaman sets up a basketball court, with lines of white eels and baskets balanced on the noses of seals. But again, the swamp monster is spotted, and even Aquaman catches a glimpse. But the creature vanishes, though Aquaman notices a stream of air bubbles in the water, and a yacht anchored offshore.
Later, on the island, we learn that two thugs have been posing as the monster to scare the kids away. Their boss, "Big Mike," was to pick them up at their island hideout for a big job tonight, but wouldn't approach while the kids were around. Suddenly, the crooks are surrounded by dozens of glowing eyes. They panic as giant beetle-like creatures close in on them. But it's just the kids, disguised with fishnet costumes, luminous shells, and tree branches. Aquaman turns the thugs, and their friends offshore, over to the police.
They might have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for those meddling fish.
"The Most Dangerous Bug In the World?"
Writer: Cary Bates, Artists: Curt Swan & Murphy Anderson
Clark Kent is walking towards the Galaxy Broadcasting building, thinking about the film that he's promised to make of Superman performing super-feats for the time capsule that the Mayor of Metropolis is due to seal tomorrow, when a small boy running around the corner bumps into him. The lad apologizes, and Clark gives him a good-natured pat on the shoulder. But a few minutes later, the boy arrives at his grandfather's laboratory some blocks away, where the scientist is preparing a demonstration for a pair of businessmen.
The scientist, Hobbs by name, has invented a microscopic listening device with a worldwide range. His grandson, Bobby, has planted it on an unsuspecting passerby for the purposes of demonstration. As he activates the receiver, the men hear a strange noise... one that sounds like a typewriter, but at an incredible speed. Of course, it's Clark, working to meet a deadline with a minute to spare.
At that moment, Clark receives a telepathic call for help. A midget spacecraft, only two feet long, has passed through a dimensional rift from an anti-matter universe into our own, and their controls are jammed. If the ship touches any solid matter, the resulting explosion could destroy our entire planet. Superman is forced to stay ahead of the ship, drilling through mountains and evaporating waterfalls with his heat vision, to keep the ship from coming into contact with anything. Meanwhile, the men listening to the flying and drilling sounds being broadcast by the bug make the deduction that their subject is really Superman! On a hunch, Hobbs shows Bobby a picture of Clark Kent in the newspaper (because everyone knows that Kent can get in touch with Superman) and the boy confirms that this is the man he bumped into.
Superman increases his speed to create a backwash, dragging the tiny ship behind him, around the globe and back to the rift that brought them into our universe. (Why the ship didn't blow up on contact with the air, I don't know. It probably had some sort of force field.) Flying back to Metropolis, Superman hears a high frequency radio signal coming from the Clark Kent clothes in his cape's pouch... a sound he was too preoccupied to notice before. Soon after, young Bobby visits Clark in his office and tells him the whole story, promising that neither he nor the men in the lab will ever tell anyone what they know. Clark tells Bobby that he trusts him, but suggests that he and his granddad watch the 6:00 news on WGBS tonight. At that time, Clark shows his viewing audience a film clip made by Superman earlier in the day for the Mayor's time capsule. It showed Superman flying, drilling through rock, and performing the other stunts that the eavesdroppers heard that afternoon. They conclude that Clark must have previewed the film in his office while they were listening. Of course, we know that Clark made the film with a remote control camera after the fact. The Mayor got his film, Clark kept his secret, and everyone ended up happy. (A couple of years later, it turned out that the businessmen who were interested in purchasing the bugging device were connected to the White House... but that's a whole 'nother story... ;) )
-- Bob

World's Finest Comics #169

World's Finest Comics #169 (Sept 1967)

The cover by Curt Swan and George Klein depicted an unshaven, powerless Superman struggling to help Batman repair a broken-down Batmobile, as Supergirl and Batgirl hide behind a fence, gloating. It looks to me like another case of a cover being designed before the story was written, but judge for yourself.

"The Supergirl - Batgirl Plot"
Script: Cary Bates
Pencils: Curt Swan
Inks: George Klein

As the story opens, Supergirl is flying on patrol over an empty field somewhere between Stanhope College and Gotham City, when a huge cloud in the shape of a human hand appears out of nowhere and tries to grab her. Naturally, her own counterattacks pass through the gaseous creature with no effect, but when it catches her, the vapor is so intensely cold that it makes even her shiver.

At that moment, Gotham's newest crimefighter, the Dominoed Dare-doll, Batgirl, arrives on a Bat-Scooter. She tosses a chemical grenade at the giant fist, but it too has no effect, and the hand scoops her up as well. In desperation, Supergirl focuses her X-ray vision on the chemical residue from Batgirl's bomb. The X-rays alter the chemicals, somehow causing the cloud-hand to explode, and the two new friends congratulate one another on their teamwork.

Later that day, in their sorority house and library office respectively, Linda Danvers and Barbara Gordon watch a televised ceremony honoring Batman and Superman, as trophies of their past cases are placed into a time capsule to be launched into orbit for 500 years. They think, why shouldn't Supergirl and Batgirl get the same glory?

(What was the obsession with time capsules during the Silver Age? I can think of several more DC stories involving time capsules. Was this a fad that I missed in the sixties? Was there a fear that the commie hordes were going to wipe out all our museums and libraries, so that historical records had to be buried or launched into space to preserve them?)

The next day, Superman appears at a public ceremony to place the cornerstone of a new skyscraper -- that's already been built. As he shoves the stone into place, he pushes a bit too hard, and the tower begins to topple toward the crowd. Superman tries to fly up to catch it, but his powers suddenly and inexplicably vanish. Fortunately, Supergirl arrives at that moment to save the crowd. When her cousin's powers return moments later, the two fly off. Superman wonders what caused his powers to fail, and Supergirl thinks to herself that she was responsible, and that "this super-oaf" will soon be "as popular in Metropolis as an anteater in a flea circus."

That evening at Gotham's annual Fair of the Future, the Dynamic Duo corners a desperate criminal atop an atomic reactor. Robin tries to tackle the crook, but stumbles, allowing the fugitive to get him in a hammerlock. Batman thinks that "there's only one way to save Robin;" he drops to his knees and begs for Robin's life. The crook just laughs and throws the Boy Wonder down into the reactor -- but Batgirl arrives on the scene, rescues Robin with a Batrope, and subdues the criminal with a judo flip. Batman and Robin are both puzzled by Batman's compulsion to plead, and Batgirl thinks that "the gallant Caped Crusader will soon find out that his troubles are only beginning!"

A series of similar events over the next few days cause the World's Finest Team to suspect that their female counterparts are somehow behind their troubles, and note that Batgirl is still an unknown quantity. "Holy alter-ego!" Robin comments. "She might be a criminal... maybe even an alien!" Meanwhile, Batgirl and Supergirl, in a hidden cavern miles away, decide that "it's time for Step Two of Operation Take-Over!"

Batman and Robin, returning from an important case, find that the hidden entrance to the Batcave doesn't open as they approach. Parking the Batmobile outside, they enter Wayne Manor and take the elevator down to the cave, only to find it completely empty! At the same time, in the arctic, Superman finds his young cousin carrying his Fortress of Solitude away to a new location. When he confronts her, his powers disappear again, and he plummets into a snowdrift. Hours later, Batman and Robin, flying to the Fortress in the Batplane (which had been hangared somewhere outside the Batcave), spot Superman lying in the snow and give him a ride back to Metropolis. They wonder how Batgirl learned the Batcave's location and emptied it, and whether she is working with Supergirl or has super-powers herself.

The next day, the Dynamic Duo barges into the hideout of a criminal gang they'd been trailing, and makes short work of them. (Personal note: During this fight, Robin's mask somehow vanished from his face. The second letter I ever wrote to a comic was to point out this fact. Yes, I was an 8-year-old boo-boo hunter. The letter wasn't published, but I did receive a nice form letter on sage green paper, answering frequently-asked questions about the Superman Family.) As Batman ties up the gangsters, Robin goes out to the plane to radio Commissioner Gordon. When he doesn't return, Batman goes outside to find him and the plane gone without a sound -- and a Bat-Compact laying on the ground.

Later, Batman drives to Metropolis to find Superman at the side of the road, hitchhiking. His powers gone, his face covered with stubble, and his Clark Kent clothes missing, the Man of Steel had no other means of transportation. Batman drives Superman back to Gotham, planning to stop at Wayne Manor to pick up some things, but when he removes his mask to change to Bruce Wayne he finds that his face now resembles Curt Swan.

The heroes spend the night searching in vain for clues, when one of the Batmobile's supposedly blowout-proof tires gets a flat, and the car slams into a pole. In the scene from the cover, Superman struggles to pump up the tire while Batman notes that even the spare is flat. Suddenly, Supergirl and Batgirl step out from behind a fence and challenge their male counterparts to a showdown. Supergirl dares her cousin to catch her as she flies into space, and with a gesture she restores his powers and even makes his beard disappear. As he flies in pursuit, she hurls a meteor at him. He thinks she's gone crazy, but then his X-ray vision reveals that the meteor has a kryptonite core, making him wonder why she wasn't affected by it. He tosses another meteor at it, knocking it back at her, and it knocks her unconscious -- from the impact, not from the green K. He realizes that she couldn't be the real Supergirl, and surely enough, underneath a face mask and wig, she's really Black Flame, a Kandorian villainess who lost her powers years ago from gold K exposure.

Back on Earth, Batgirl pulls out a Bat-Whistle, which produces sonic vibrations that cause the sign on a tailor shop to break loose. The giant scissors that were part of the display pin Batman's cape to the ground; but he's still able to toss a Batarang, wrapping Batgirl up tight. He removes her mask, to find the face of Selina Kyle -- the Catwoman! ("Meow, Darling!")

Back in the Batcave, the heroes question the villainesses, now dressed in their own costumes. Black Flame explains that she invented a serum to restore her powers and give her immunity to kryptonite, though she was not as invulnerable as before. She used an enlarging spray to escape Kandor, and a brain command ring to make Superman think his powers were gone and that his and Batman's faces had changed, and Catwoman used a special variety of catnip to induce Batman's cowardice.

The next panel confuses me to this day. I think it only makes sense if Cary Bates assumed that the villainesses were still in disguise and Curt Swan jumped the gun by drawing them in their own costumes. If you have another explanation, please let me know: Batman asks, "Now where are the real Supergirl and Batgirl?" Superman interjects, "You mean this Batgirl is phoney, too?" Batman replies, "Of course! Batgirl's eyes are blue -- Catwoman's are green!" (Wasn't the fact that she's wearing a Catwoman costume enough of a giveaway?)

"The captive crime-chicks" take the heroes to their own cavern HQ, where Supergirl and Batgirl are shackled to chairs, Supergirl with kryptonite chains. Since Superman can't approach the green K, Batman steps forward to free them. But before he can touch them, a heat beam reduces them to ashes. Suddenly, the real Supergirl and Batgirl arrive, explaining that the mysterious cloud-hand carried them into another dimension and they've only just managed to escape. Supergirl used her heat vision to destroy the dummies in the chairs, because they were gimmicked to send Batman into that other dimension if he touched them.

"Suddenly, an amazing transformation..." as Black Flame and Catwoman change into Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite! Bat-Mite declares that, since his hero Batman didn't fall into the trap, he has won their bet. But Mxyzptlk says that Batman would have fallen into the trap if Supergirl and Batgirl hadn't saved him, so Bat-Mite owes him 100 magic units. Bat-Mite concedes defeat, and writes out a check, which he signs with his real name to make it legal. Mxyzptlk reads, "Your name is Klt Pzy Xm?" and disappears into the fifth dimension. Bat-Mite explains that he only agreed to this bet so that he'd have a chance to trick Mxyzptlk back to his own dimension, and bids the heroes farewell, in what would turn out to be his last in-continuity appearance. (He would next be seen more that a decade later in Bob Rozakis's classic "Bat-Mite's New York Adventure.") "It's been fun!" he says as he leaves, and Batman replies, "As Robin might say, that kind of fun MITE drive us BATTY!"


"The Amazing Cube"
Script: George Kashdan
Art: Bernard Baily

The backup feature in World's Finest during this period was the Editors' Round Table, where different DC editors would choose favorite stories from the archives to reprint. This one first appeared in Tales of the Unexpected #9 (Jan 1957).

In a Las Vegas casino, gambler Harvey Hacker just lost his last dollar at the roulette table. As he's about to leave, he notices an odd-looking man at the craps table, asking for permission to use his own dice. The house decides to allow it after inspecting them and determining that they're not loaded. However, the player never loses while using them!

Harvey follows the stranger, hoping to figure out a way to learn his secret. Driving out of town, the stranger's car is wrecked as an "atomic station" explodes as he's driving past! The stranger begs Harvey to drag him away from the radiation, and Harvey agrees -- IF the stranger will tell him the secret of the dice. The stranger reveals that he carved them from a meteorite, and that he doesn't know why they always come up the way he wants them to. Harvey finds one of the dice, and concludes that the other one was destroyed in the explosion. Reneging on his agreement, he leaves the stranger to die with a casual "So long, sucker!"

Harvey drives home to his little shack, and locks the die in a metal strongbox, planning to have it analyzed by a chemist to see if in can be duplicated. In the middle of the night, he hears a noise. The cube has grown, and burst out of the strongbox. Not sure if he's awake or dreaming, Harvey carries the cube and locks it in a safe. But in the morning, as he drinks his coffee, the safe cracks open, and the cube is still growing! It's soon too big to fit through the doorway. Harvey grabs an axe and tries to chop it to pieces, but the axe breaks. Harvey runs out of the cabin just in time, as the cube fills the entire room, and soon breaks the house apart!

As Harvey wonders if it will ever stop, or just keep growing forever, a giant hand reaches down from above and lifts him into the air.

"What does it mean, Professor?" asks a scientist from the ruined atomic station. His colleague answers, "It seems that, somehow, the atomic radiation had an effect on this piece of carved meteor, making it temporarily give off rays that shrank everything near it!" Harvey drops to his knees and grabs his head as he realizes that the cube didn't grow any larger, but he's now stuck as a miniature man in a normal-sized world.