Superbaby
"Superbaby's New Family!"
Superboy #192, December 1972
By Leo Dorfman, Bob Brown, and Murphy Anderson

Superbaby gets the cover spot!



 

Synopsis: 

The Kents are alarmed that someone is stealing from their pantry, but it's only baby Clark, who's flying off with his parents' groceries, concerned that they'll now learn his "big secret".  Clark spills the beans immediately: he's been giving food to his hungry friends. Pa's upset that these "friends" have seen Clark flying, and Clark agrees to lead Pa to them, flying at slow speed so he can keep up. Pa hopes he'll be able to talk these friends into keeping Clark's powers a secret.

On the way, Clark rescues a bear cub falling from a tree. The mother bear threatens the Kents, but backs off when she senses that Clark is their "cub". These are Clark's hungry "friends"!Pa is relieved, but thinks the bears would be better off at the reserve on Tower Mountain, since their current habitat is being developed for residential zoning.  Pa agrees to let Clark play with the bears whenever he wants, but he's warned against going down into the valley, were construction workers might see him exercising his powers.

 On a later day, the mama bear and cubs wander into the valley, where they are nearly run over by a steamroller. Mama bear threatens the workmen, but Clark swoops in to relocate his ursine pals to the Tower Mountain reserve. But the inevitable "bad mans" come, this time, hunters illegally poaching in the reserve!

In the reserve, Clark is hanging out helping his new bear family:



The hunters are tracking the bear, who in the page above wrecked their shack, and when they spot Clark, they figure there's going to be a reward for saving this captured kid!

Shooting begins, Clark reveals his powers in his attempts to save the bears, and, assuming "mans be mad because they want some honey", he shares honey with them by throwing a bee hive at them!

The bad guys flee directly into the arms of the waiting police, who, of course, don't believe their crazy story about a flying baby. 

Thoughts:

I'm very interested in how the editor Murray Boltinoff decided to promote the back-up feature on the cover. He did this occasionally--I can remember an issue of Teen Titans where an Aqualad back-up got the cover illustration. He'd been doing horror-tinged covers, and although this Superbaby story isn't exactly horror, perhaps he felt the bear-loosing image was more exciting than anything the lead story had to offer. To stay on-brand, he had cover artist Nick Cardy depict Superbaby in the classic S-suit and cape, while inside, he wears his usual toddler outfit--same colors, but no cape, boots, or emblem.

One interesting thing about this story is that it shows Smallville being within walking distance of a very mountainous region, with cliffs and valleys and bears. You don't usually find farmlands, as Smallville has been most usually presented, adjacent to the hills. 


Not much more to say about this, though. Bob Brown's sometimes rough pencils look nice beneath Murphy Anderson's  masterful brush. 

I think you might be referring to TT 30, MWGallaher, which also featured a Kid Flash solo story.



I always thought Anderson's inks nicely softened the square edges of Bob Brown's pencils.

Smallville was not only a geographical anomaly when necessary -- there were woods, gorges, mines, caves, coal deposits, farms, lakes, and the Smallville River, but also the world's most cosmopolitan small town, with an orphanage, a dam, a zoo, a museum, a stadium, a radio station, a movie theatre with a doorman, a hospital, a public swimming pool, an aquarium, and a hotel, as well as a constant flow of gangsters with all kinds of tanks and other mechanical marvels assaulting the Smallville bank.

I'm guessing Riverdale is a similar kind of town.

An Untold Tale of Superboy When He Was a Tot
"The Return of Superbaby's Pal!"
Superboy #187, June 1972
By Leo Dorfman, Bob Brown, and Murphy Anderson

Whoa, I can't believe I skipped over this one! I was purchasing Superboy regularly in the early days of reading and collecting, and I certainly had this one, and was looking forward to the promised return of Clark's bewitching buddy from a few issues back.

Synopsis:

We open with baby Clark once again alarming his parents with a display of superpowers in public, this time at the local rodeo:


Clark promises to behave, and the parents tell him to go off and play with the calves so they can check out a trick roping exhibition. Wait, I know that Clark's not likely to be in any danger, but given Superbaby's track record and the fundamental expectations that parents of a "normal" toddler won't leave him completely unsupervised at a crowded event playing with animals twice as big, plus the fact that most kids would rather watch a rope trick than a boring bovine, I'd have expected them to keep tighter reins on their super-powered son!

Also at the rodeo, Clark's witch pal Gary and his parents, who, like the Kents, leave their tyke to play on his own while they enjoy Indian dancing. Gary, of course, promises not to do any magic, and he's delighted to be reunited with his friend from Superboy #178. 

Meanwhile, a dispute is going on between Wilson, who needs hay for his calves, and Wilson, who insists on payment for previous deliveries of hay. He's brought the sheriff along--it seems Wilson is running this rodeo, which will be shut down if he doesn't come up with the dough!

Clark and Gary don't care about fair business practices, all they know is the calves are hungry and there's a flatbed full of cow chow there for the taking. Gary's promised not to use magic, but Clark's only promised not to be seen using his powers, so he comes up with a clever scheme to feed the animals without exposing his powers:



At the rodeo, the tired old bull is, for the sake of a good show, enraged with a cattle prod and a cowbell under his belly. Clark and the Kents are disgusted by the animal cruelty on display, and Clark, hidden by the dust clouds, flies in and swipes the bell. When the clouds clear, the cowboy is sitting atop an exhausted, sleeping bull, to the loud derision of the audience. 

The rope-tying event is just as unpleasant to Gary's family, and Gary puts a stop to the display with a simple spell: "Magic poem, make me laugh! Rope tie cowboy, not the calf!"

The tots have made a fiasco of this rodeo, and the audience rushes the ticket box insisting on refunds. Suprisingly, Wilson pays up, and now, since he can't afford to keep the show, Leary steps in...mentioning he might just send the animals to the sausage or glue factory! Pa Kent steps in, getting a pretty remarkable deal: $200 to both settle Wilson's debt and get the cattle, who will be delivered to his Smallville farm!

As all depart, the boys want some popcorn, but the popcorn vendor refuses to pop a whole batch of raw corn with the audience gone. Clark and Gary know how to turn the bag into popcorn, of course:



Our two pals part, each family driving to their separate homes. None of the parents believe their son's tale of a super-powered friend, and they hope to reunite some day.

Thoughts:

Well, that was ridiculous. More of a lame sitcom in the Bewitched vein than a superhero story. There's obviously a lot that's hard to swallow here, from the lax supervision to the lowball purchase price, even by 1972 standards. The only real villainy this time around is mistreatment of animals, and I wouldn't think the typical audience of the early 70's would be that offended by traditional rodeo practices that we see here. 

Re-reading this, I'm getting a vague memory that Gary did reappear later, as a teen encountering Superboy, not as a toddler. I'm not finding any evidence of that, and I may be thinking of some other pointy-eared teen from a Superman family story somewhere else. 

Superboy
"Big Race for a Mini-Hero!"
Superboy #196, July 1973
By Leo Dorfman, Bob Brown, and Vinnie Colletta
Once again, Superbaby gets the cover:

While this is still a "Superbaby" story, it's billed only as a "Superboy" story, and, as we see above, while it was the final story in this issue, it's played as the cover story. This comic appears to be in a bit of a shakeup. It's been through an outright horror phase throughout the early 70's, despite the occasional light-hearted Superbaby story. For this issue, we have three short stories: one a Superman "history" story, relating the story of Superboy's first costumed public exercise of superpowers. Next, another story with a supernatural flavor, with ghosts, witches, graveyards, and death. And finally the Superbaby story, with auto racing.

Synopsis:
The ever-convenient dust cloud hides Superbaby's catching of a flying car wheel when a racer wrecks at the car race the Kent family is attending.
Jonathan Kent greets his old pal Matt, a racer who was injured in yesterday's trials because someone tampered with his car. He was hoping to win $500,000--race sponsor National Motors is going to buy the design of the winning car for that price.
Next we meet our bad guys, Kean and Dalton, in their Red Devil racecar. Matt accuses them of sabotaging him, their only real competition in the race.
Since Matt can't drive, he recruits Pa Kent to fill in. Apparently Pa was a racing driver before he got married! Pa joins the race, in Matt's car. Opponent racer Dalton also has some history with Kent, who beat him a few times in the past.
When the race starts, all the cars except for Kent's and the Red Devil are taken out of the race in a smashup.
Galton sprinkles spikes behind him to blow out Clark's tires. Clark flies in and saves him from a wipeout. (This race is apparently some kind of open course race through the rocky canyons and desert that surround Smallville).
Kent gets back in the race, changing out the single shredded tire for the spare:



Yeah, I don't think a racecar like this would carry a spare, and certainly wouldn't carry the tools needed to change a tire.

Kent returns to the race, surprising Galton, who pulls a stunt right out of the Saturday morning cartoons, detouring Jonathan Kent with a phony "detour" sign that leads him into a mudhole. Superbaby digs him out like a dog, and the mud flies over the far side of the mountain onto Galton's car.

Kent catches up now on a mountain road, and Galton releases a special smoke cartridge in his tail pipe that leaves Pa in a black cloud. Baby Clark takes over the driving, since his super-vision allows him to see just fine. Instead, Galton loses control and plunges off the mountain side!

Despite Galton's villainy, Clark must save him, and he does so by pushing Galton's car across the lake bed back onto the mountain round, where Galton's Red Devil glides across the finish line and wins the race.

But the Red Devil, after Clark's rough rescue, falls apart on the road, and although Galton wins the trophy cup and $1,000, it's Matt who's awarded the half million for rights to the car design. After all, why would National want to buy a "rattletrap that falls apart like a dropped jigsaw puzzle"?

Thoughts:
This installment was perhaps a bit unlikely.
Let's see, we've got Pa Kent an experienced race car driver who can come up to professional performance standards with no notice. We've got a race that takes place mostly off-track where the audience can't even observe, through the mountainous canyon and lake areas presumably near the farming community of Smallville. The cars are racers of the type designed for operation strictly on a racetrack, but they're raced through wild terrain, and carry their own spares which can easily be swapped out by the driver. Like Dick Dastardly, the opponent driver has tricked his car up to sabotage other drivers, including "rolling coal" like a-hole rural teens of current day. A massive crash dwindles the field to two competitors right off the bat. The sponsor is willing to pony up half a million in advance for the design rights to the winning car of some obviously minor racing event, in what appears to be a completely conventional car with very few if any patentable design characteristics.
If the Witch Boy stories were inspired by sitcom Bewitched, this is TV's Wacky Races cartoon imported into the babe of steel's world. DC would much much later publish their own, mature audiences take on the Wacky Races.
Vince Colletta's inks could sometimes look good over the pencils of Bob Brown--I'm thinking specifically of some issues of Daredevil for Marvel--but here, the result is not as good--sometimes crude and rushed looking.
This is the last of what passes for Superbaby back-ups in this era of the Superboy comic. Pretty soon, the Legion of Super-Heroes would take over first the back-up slot and then the lead and eventually the entire magazine. In the next round of back-up reviews, I'll be heading back over to Action Comics to look over a run of back-up features that preceded the set I started this thread with, where we'll see not just Clark Kent and Superbaby features again, but a couple of other concepts that we haven't seen yet in this thread!

A Secret Chapter in the Life of Clark Kent
"The Day They Killed Clark Kent"
by Leo Dorfman, Curt Swan, and Murphy Anderson
Action Comics 404, September 1971

Synopsis:

This story takes place during Clark Kent's college days, when he was working his way through Metropolis University. Clark interrupts a fraternity hazing in process by pretending to slip on shaving cream and "accidentally" knocking out the frat brothers. The hazing victim, Dave, is not at all grateful, since it's spoiled his chance to join Zeta Mu, the "swankiest fraternity on campus," a frat for mostly rich kids where Dave hoped to make some valuable career connections. 

The frat brothers are ticked that Clark has been busting up their hazing, and plan to get payback, declaring Dave a member, then inviting Clark to join up, promising him that they've changed their hazing ways. Clark falls for this obvious scheme, but with his super powers, sees that he's in for some real hazing. 




Clark, discretely using his powers, pretty much wrecks the frat house. Raising the stakes, the fellas get their dupe Dave to use a cattle prod on Clark, who plays dead. The frat brothers flee, leaving Dave to take the fall. Clark changes to Superman, and flies outside, where he spies on Dave trying to get the others to go back inside and try to revive Clark.

Superman quickly returns to his disguised position "dead" on the floor, as all the frat brothers come to his aid, with Dave performing CPR.But we know Clark loves to teach his friends a lesson, and he's going to treat Dave just like he would come to treat Jimmy, Lois, Kara, Krypto, and anyone else in need of some moral correction:

"I'll let the poor devil sweat it out a bit longer, to drive the lesson home!"

As cruel as it may seem, Clark knows how to get results: after he revives, Zeta Mu not only renounces pranks and hazing for good, the members use their own allowances to rebuild their "club-house", making it into a study center where the members tutor students in need of help. Clark observes that they are no longer "college boys" but are now "college men."

Thoughts:

Hey, I'm as prejudiced against frat boys as the next guy, but Clark went a little too far here. Using his powers for property damage that he lets others pay for, cruelly subjecting his peers to the terror of thinking they'd killed someone...at least he told the cops he wouldn't press charges!

The hazing depicted is quaint compared to some of the real-life hazing horror stories that have come to light. Whatever valid complaints I might have about this story, I've at least got to give it some credit for attacking a problem that would continue to go without much attention until recent years. 

And at least, for once, it's got more Clark than Superman!

Over on the letters page, well-known letter hack Richard Morrissey suggests that they publish an "Untold Tale" of Morgan Edge in the back-ups. 

Untold Tales of the Fortress  
Superman vs. Supergirl "The Feud of the Titans"
by Leo Dorfman (as Geoff Browne), Curt Swan, and Murphy Anderson
Action Comics 402, July 1971

Synopsis:

Supergirl has built a private entrance to the Fortress of Solitude--she and Superman currently despise each other, and want to avoid each other. Superman finds, on entry, that Supergirl has filled the Fortress with "noxious fumes" just to spite him (the fumes can harm neither him nor the residents of Kandor, who have their own oxygen tank).

Superman sucks up the fumes:



Furious, Superman intends to evict her, but she's erected a barrier between their sections of the Fortress:



The Hall of Trophies just so happens to entirely reside in Superman's half of the Fortress. Superman destroys several trophies, but pauses before killing the twin-headed bird from the planet Duplor. His code against killing has kicked in, inspiring him to wonder where all this hatred and spite came from. 

He recalls it starting when he and his cousin were flying some outlawed weapons to the Fortress, weapons that, if lost, could doom the planet. 

The Kryptonian heroes begin disposing of the weapons in their "disintegration pit", an atomic cauldron fueled by radioactive Kryptonian elements obtained from Kandor. They dissolve the "Jigsaw-ray" which can dismantle cities. They destroy the "seismotron", an earthquake generator, and the vapor bombs that can brainwash people. 

But Superman's X-ray vision reveals that Supergirl has stashed one of the weapons, a laser gun that can destroy Superman. Supergirl detects that her cousin has secreted a cryogen freeze ray, and both are convinced that the other intends to kill them! So they both fire the weapons at each other, the rays colliding and doing no apparent damage to either. 
And that was the start of this "feud of the titans." 

Supergirl spots Superman preparing to trash all of her trophies in the disintegration pit, and flies to stop him. Flying over the cauldron, she is affected by the Kryptonian fuel's radiation, and plunges to her doom in the pit.  Superman is overcome with his instinctive concern, despite his hatred, and although Supergirl opposes his rescue, he saves her. Superman spots the two headed bird, which is fighting itself, head to head! Once outside the Fortress, the bird returns to self-love:



It was the fumes! The brainwash bombs contained a "hate gas" which combined with the Kryptonian radioactivity, generating hatred between the two super-heroes. They cleanse the Fortress, and all is well again. 

Thoughts:
The Fortress of Solitude seems at first a crazy idea to be the subject of a back-up series, but y'know what? I get it! As a kid, I was fascinated by facilities, especially cool super-headquarters, and I'm sure I wasn't the only one. If stories centered around doings in the Fortress got the favorable reader response that I expect they did, it's no wonder they'd take advantage of it. 

Supergirl's wearing one of her many 70's alternative outfits this time around, with thigh-high boots and red gloves. The gloves look surprisingly odd on a Superman Family character, although with the especially jealous way they guarded their secret identities, protecting their fingerprints seems like a good idea. I'm pretty confident that this issue came up somewhere along the way, given how many souvenirs Superman gave away to his adoring public. 

Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson appear to be jazzing up their style a bit, trying to compete with the more dynamic styles that were increasingly coming into vogue. The emotional charge makes it even easier for them to inject some liveliness into the pages. Swan was always good at depicting emotion!