Action Comics #409
On sale in December 1971
Cover by Nick Cardy
I remember getting this one on one of our grocery trips to the local store, the Big Star on Overton Crossing. In a few months, Big Star would stop stocking their spinner rack, which would become sadly sparser over time, and it would finally disappear from its prime spot near the entry to the building.
While many of the comics I’ve revisited have, until this thread, faded almost completely from my memory, I have some distinctive recollections of key aspects of this one. Allow me to see what I can dredge up before peeking inside again.
The lead story is “Who Is Clark Kent’s Killer—and Why Is He Doing These Terrible Things To Me?”. I’m pretty sure this was drawn by Curt Swan and Murphy Anderson, which is not a remarkable feat of memory. The most specific visual I recall is a black-suited character flying out of the window of Clark’s apartment. I remember this story had an unknown super-powered being threatening Clark, and it turns out to be Clark himself. The premise is that Superman has been working himself ragged, helping out in emergencies 24 hours a day, since he doesn’t need to sleep. That’s true enough, his Kryptonian body continues to work just fine without rest, but his brain requires time to disengage and dream. Sleep deprivation leads to a sort of psychosis.
I can see why this would stick with me. I’ve always been interested in dreaming, so these kinds of facts I’d pick up from comics had an impact. In fact, that spinner rack from Big Star I mentioned before? That has loomed large in my dreams to this very day! In recent months, I’ve dreamed, as I often do, about going into a store to find an old spinner rack stocked with a few far out of date comics, few of which I have any interest in, but I always browse them.
The backup, “The Baffling Block of Metropolis”, probably has more Swanderson art, and it’s about a big yellow block of some impervious substance. Superman watches as the military and government scientists attempt to figure out what’s going on by breaking into this monolith, but all attempts fail. Eventually, the block disappears—it was all Superman’s experiment to confirm that this would be suitable for the doorway to his Fortress of Solitude.
The Teen Titans story, I think, is a story set in the Olympic games. Maybe there’s some non-super athlete that they assist? Anyway, almost certainly by Haney and Cardy.
Now let’s dive in and see how well I remembered this…
On the opening page of “Who Is…”, Clark takes the elevator up to his 25th floor office at the Galaxy building.
The two-page spread following is designed to be read vertically, turning the comic book 90 degrees. That’s something I didn’t remember!
The elevator shoots through the roof, and fortunately Clark’s riding solo, so he can change into his costume and fly to safety. Is someone trying to kill Clark Kent with a booby-trapped lift?
Oh, the story’s by Cary Bates. Not surprising.
Superman can’t find any evidence to indicate the saboteur, and he flies off to other duties at Liberty City. It’s a “super-village” he’s constructing to offer “as a free sanctuary for all the underprivileged minority groups and Indian tribes in this area!” So
that’s what’s keeping him busy all night: not general emergencies, but this philanthropic endeavor.
From a modern perspective, this sounds less like a charitable effort and more like a misguided means of getting minorities out of Metropolis proper. I doubt Cary Bates had any racist intentions, but doesn’t it sound like “super-projects”?
When he returns home at dawn to 344 Clinton, a mysterious glowing transparent spectral figure watches from the shadows. I suddenly remember some sort of alien Sherlock Holmes type from one of these old Superman stories…maybe this is him?
In the apartment, all of Clark’s furnishings are flying around his super-pad! They all smash into Clark—if he weren’t really Superman, he’d have been killed! Is this another attempt on Clark’s life? Clark can only assume that it is!
And now the alien materializes…yes, it’s the Holmesian alien detective, Shalox!
This is his final test from detective school (he’s already flunked his first two attempts)! Shalox figures out how the apartment was rigged to kill Clark, and the then accompanies Superman to Liberty City, gifting him with a “sona-whistle” to summon him should the need arise.
Superman gets to work, Shalox takes a nap, and the black-suited mystery figure arrives, thinking “I cannot be at peace with myself until Clark Kent is annihilated!”
The next day, as Clark walks to work, accompanied by the invisible Shalox (shades of Percival Popp and The Spectre!), a driverless car careens toward him in the busy streets! Clark escapes by breaking a manhole cover, its apparent timely failure accounting for his public escape from death.
A puff of super-breath sends the car flying, and Superman zips through the sewer so he can come up and catch the car on its way down.
Night comes, and Shalox sleeps again, reminding Clark to blow the whistle if another attempt occurs (but wait, he shouldn’t be in any danger as Superman, since it’s Clark that’s the target, right?). The mystery assailant is in fact stalking the unfinished streets of Liberty City, seething at his failures to eliminate Kent!
Next day, the efforts escalate, as the Galaxy Building is sucked into the ground beneath it! There’s a tunnel there all the way to the Earth’s center!
Superman manages to restore the building in moments, on a new reinforced foundation (I’m no civil engineer, but I don’t know of any earthly materials that could be used to create a foundation in “moments”). Bates doesn’t call on Swan to depict just how Superman manages to accomplish this.
When Superman tells Shalox he found the sonic-whistle caught on a stray girder under the foundation, Shalox knows something is up, because it’s impossible that the whistle would be found there, but he keeps his cards close for now. He’ll wait for the killer to reveal himself tonight, but he knows who it is!
That night, the black-clad killer does indeed show up, and he violently attacks Clark with his bare hands, only to find that his victim wasn’t Clark, but Shalox in disguise. He doffs his mask, revealing himself to be Superman.
Luckily, Shalox’s race is not so fragile, and he summarizes the case: Superman was being driven mad without the escape of nightly dreaming, creating a third personality that was jealous of Clark’s “uncluttered normal life”.
Well, no scene of the black-clad Superman flying out of Clark’s apartment window. I guess I was confusing that with a scene from another story, but I think my memory held up relatively well here.
The reprint is indeed “The Secret Olympic Heroes”, from TEEN TITANS #4, 1966. It’s the first appearance of Speedy with the Titans, and it’s by Haney and Cardy, as expected.
The story opens with training track star Davey Bradley winning a race and continuing to run out of the stadium, leaving his disabled father Ted behind. It’s a mystery that interests the Titans (Robin, Kid Flash, Aqualad, and Wonder Girl). Ted requests their help in locating Davey, who is a contender for the Gold Medal. The father has some history that Robin begins to recall, but the team is interrupted by an alarm indicating an intruder at Titan’s HQ.
It’s Speedy, who has crashed the meeting to announce he’ll be giving an archery demonstration at the Olympics. While he was practicing, he was kayoed by an agent of the “international organization dedicated to hate and distrust”, Diablo!
The Titan’s track Davey to a “hobo jungle by the railroad tracks”. Turns out he doesn’t
want to compete in the Olympics! This is a crushing disappointment to Dad, who was an Olympic hopeful until a car accident disabled him. Dad’s ticked, and Robin understands Davey’s problem. No, it’s not that Dad’s an emotionally abusive coach/father, Davey’s worried he’ll disappoint Dad by losing!
The team goes to the Olympics, with Davey in disguise. Davey’s biggest rival, Kravik, nearly runs him over running through the Olympic village.
The Titans stay busy battling Diablo’s various efforts to sow discord among the athletes, and Davey disappears!
Oh, no, to be continued! I was wondering how they’d squeeze an entire issue of TEEN TITANS into this comic!
Next comes the letters page, “Where the Action Is”. That’s a pretty good title for a letter column—I was beginning to get the idea of clever lettercol titles, and would soon begin to see opportunities for readers to suggest them…and to envy those whose ideas were chosen. I think I sent in one or two…
There wasn’t a lot to be gleaned from reviews of Superman stories from a few issues before I started reading, but I did appreciate the response to a complaint about ads in the middle of stories. The editor explained that the ad pages are printed separately, so they have to appear in the same configuration in each issue. I would later take advantage of this by sabotaging the collectability of many of my DC comics, tearing out the ad pages and leaving the story pages fully attached to each other. This did
not work on the Marvel comics, which had ads printed on the opposite sides of story pages.
Finally, “The Baffling Block of Metropolis”. It’s Cary Bates writing, but not Curt Swan but instead George Tuska penciling under Murphy Anderson’s inks.
The authorities can’t call on Superman to assist with the mystery of the block, as he is busy in Africa drilling for the world’s largest diamond.
My memories were a bit off: it’s the Metropolis police and city government and local construction workers who are trying to penetrate the block with gunfire and sledgehammers, or trying to lift the massive object with cranes.
Meanwhile, Superman uses his powers to compact the record-setting gem into a tiny stone.
While he works, the slab is subjected to fire, explosives, and acid, standing up to all of them. Just between Superman and the police captain, who was in on the whole thing, the slab was Superman’s own creation, made from alien elements in his own gigantic forge.
While the captain knows this was a test, he doesn’t know what it was for, but the readers are about to learn, as Superman transports it to the Arctic, drills the familiar arrowhead keyhole with his diamond drill-head, and puts in in place as the Fortress of Solitude’s doorway.
I knew little about the Fortress, so it was a pretty cool story, even without any conventional adversarial conflict. I had no way of knowing that DC had previously run some “Tales of the Fortress of Solitude” backups. These kinds of stories were very distinctive to DC Comics; a Marvel would have tied these details into a mainstream adventure, rather than giving them their own spotlight.
Overall, I think I did pretty well at remembering this issue. That Cardy cover had some terrific appeal, set against a black background. This was probably the most satisfying set of Superman stories so far in my reading experience. The incomplete Titans story must surely have disappointed, though.
MONSTER APPEAL: Well, there’s an alien, but he’s semi-comic relief. I hadn’t yet read any Holmes, although that was coming, as the mid-70’s Sherlock Holmes revival of interest would suck me in.
0 out of 5!
COLLECTING INSPIRATION: I was starting to get my fill of Superman. He still had some drawing power, and I was getting a lot more familiar with the 1971 status quo, but there were many other books that I was ready to pay attention to.
1 out of 5!
ART-SCHOOLING: I’d already seen the work of George Tuska over in TEEN TITANS, but Murphy Anderson continued to shape my expectations of quality inking.
1 out of 5!
LORE: It felt like the origin of the Fortress door was significant, although it really wasn’t. It did condition me to expect that many of these little details would have stories behind them, so it shaped the way I would look at secret headquarters, trophies, weapons, etc.
Coming up, three more DC comics and one more Marvel to finish up my review of my first comics from 1971. One of them will prove to be a
very big deal in my life as a comics fan.