Battling Blondes: Round ? - Betty Versus Peggy

Taking a departure from our typical Battling Blondes (aka the Web and Thunderbolt), let's see how MLJ/Archie's finest blonde Betty Cooper stacks up to Charlton Comics's Peggy, girlfriend of Freddy.


For those who don't know, and there is a fine series of posts elsewhere on Charlton's dark haired weak-sister imitation of Archie, Freddy was a man of many tastes. Blonde, brunette, red-head... he was indiscriminatory and as thick headed as a freckle faced Mr. Andrews. And inexplicably, both attracted gorgeous blonde lasses that were exceptionally long-suffering.

Betty is legendary in her knowledge of cars, and frequently worked on Archie's various jalopies throughout the decades. Peggy, well she tends to view them as rivals!

Peggy is a no-nonsense girl... she will NOT accept competition nor will she be second fiddle to any ol' bimbo that attracts her Freddy's eye. And Betty? Groan,  this ponytail pinhead  is simply dense! Lord!

These chicks both seem to LOVE to skate with their men and seem to attract some undesirable attention. For Peggy, her competition is a big blob with no eyes...for Betty its a skinny twig dufus with an even bigger appetite than mister manzere!

A toss up, neither are the brightest of bulbs. However, you never get a clear rival for Peggy as she helps stave off all the other gals, while Betty oscillates between a love/hate relationship with Veronica. And as such she is ALWAYS second fiddle. In fact, Betty has to bust her hump maintaining Archie's broken down ride to curry his affections while Peggy need not lift a single finger.

But here's the clincher. What if Freddy met Betty, and Archie met Peggy? Both would still have wandering eyes, yet Archie would definitely dump Ronnie for the infinitely more stylish and self-confident Peg. And Betts would be but one of a menagerie of madams in Freddy's ever typical fictional life in the 50's.

Score this round to Peggy and the blondes over at Charlton (fear not, you Web fans, this won't affect the overall tally of the main competition transpiring between our guy gladiators... we'll revisit that subject in a future posting).

Now the golden age Betty of Earth-MLJ, well.. she was the cat's meow. Freddy would have bought some war stamps for her for sure! Those killer legs and demur look must have done it!

Team-Up Tuesdays: Watchmen's !mpact #1

In 1986, DC Comics reinvented its brand from top to bottom, scrapping long histories of their most established marketable brands, and even removing characters that were thought to be redundant with modern-day versions. And yet, it was during this same period when all comic book publishers were attempting to reach out to more mature readership. And from this era, the Watchmen were born as a trend-setting phenomenon.

__________

We've already dissected the similarities between their take on Charlton's characters and those of the publisher once known as MLJ then Mighty, the original template for this epic tale. However, by 1992 there was a seeming reversal of the prevailing thought only eight years previous. Now DC wanted to build new bridges with younger readership, only their mainstream publications latched onto the more adult oriented themes that made Watchmen so popular.

So once more, the histories of two languishing silver age second string franchises were intertwined though perhaps unintended.

When DC acquired the rights to Archie Comics' superhero properties, the were immediately geared to a pre-teen dynamic. Yet there was by this point the need to establish a continuity to this new fictional universe they inherited.

While Watchmen was but a 12 issue maxi-series, !mpact was to be an imprint with an open-ended publishing time table. And so, as with every new comic book universe spawned, a back story had to be developed.

And so, just as the Watchmen's World War II forebearers were the appropriated labeled Minute Men, !mpact's residential pre-modern age team was known as the American Crusaders. While only five members to the Minutemen's eight, these Crusaders had ten years of seemingly successful comraderie while the Minutemen had ten tumultuous years of infighting. While the Minutemen dawned in 1939 and disbanded in 1949, the 1953 inception date of the Crusaders was during another war time era, Korea, were the sensibilities of the public were not quite as innocent as that early time. Still, the members America's team seemed amiable.

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The years, however, would not be kind to this faux golden age !mpact group, as we will consider next week in this Watchmen !impact series.

Obscure Character Quiz #1

Which of these female fitness phenoms took down the lawless with their estrogen power-packed muscles while aiding...

Steel Sterling?

Mr. Muscles?

Who was the scientist and who the historian of this "spooky" pair?

 

Of these two synthetic humans, which was known as the Shape and which as the Shadow? 

Bonus question: Which of these androids was replicated in the same issue?

Steeler Sundays: Zippity doo dah zippity aye!

(The following is brought to you by Zip Comics:)

Zippity doo dah, Zippity aye,

My oh my what a wonderful day

Plenty of sunshine coming my way,

Zippity doo dah, Zippity aye.

Mister blue bird's on my shoulder,


it's the truth,


it's actual,


everything's satisfactual!


Zippity doo dah,

zippity aye,

zippity doo dah,

zippity aye! 

Steeler Sunday's will return in mere weeks. Stay tuned!!!

Friday Fiends: Arch-Enemies for Men of Steel

No no no... we are not speaking of a bald bad guy (well actually we are) or a deformed madmen (wait, yeah we actually are!). Instead, we are considering the OTHER Men of Steel, Sterling and Sarge specifically. Both lads faced several memorable foes during the respectable runs in Zip Comics, Mighty Comics and Sarge Steel/Secret Agent, yet none as persnickety as these two crumps!

Baron Gestapo was the necessary component for every established MLJ hero during World War II, the Nazi opposite number. They each had one: Hangman had Captain Swastika, the Web had Count Berlin, the Shield had the Hun. All were ranked officer in the secret service of the Nazi's infiltrating American society (well except the Hun) and possessed a tenacity not found among most fictional Germans of that era.

Ivan Chung was the rare mixture of Chinese and Russian, enlisted to work with the Vietnamese forces during the Vietnam conflict. Sarge Steel was among those for whom he clashed with, initially unsuccessfully. Chung gained his revenged by sending minions to lop a hand grenade which Sarge smothered at the cost of his left hand!

The brazen attitude of Gestapo, however, was unmatched by his fellow foreign agent. While Chung often used covert means and third parties to exact his revenge, the Baron actually barged right into the White House and threatened Roosevelt in Zip Comics #28! Nevertheless, the superior might and right-left hook combos Sterling delivered always flattened this flailing foe! Still, Gestapo would continue to escape the pokey and plague Sterling through the duration of the war.

Chung eventually succumbed to being allied with various other rogues with a grudge against Sarge, which we considered earlier this year, and when old badly attempted to make a play while Sarge was distracted by the Smiling Skull, it becomes quite evident that Ivan isn't up to snuff from his earlier menacing demeanor. With but a *klunk* Ivan is down for the count. However he ends up getting away, and undoubtedly reconsiders his life as a free lancer after having disenfranchised himself with his foreign masters!

Cosmic Crusaders of Cancelled Comic Creators

Mercury Man and Mister Midnight. Neither were actually assimilated into their respective publishers despite their dual appearances. Both adventures for the duo were published in anthology (of sorts) publications, Merc in Space Adventures #44 and 45, and Midnight in Mighty Crusaders #2 and Galaxia Magazine #2. In 1962 when Mercury Man debuted, the cold war was at its height and fear of nuclear war prompted the creation of several such powered individuals. Midnight's tales were published in 1983 during a period when peaceful detente led to the resolution of this conflict, resulting in a cooler and calmer type of gladiator.

Each had super-strength, lightspeed flight, and density control among the various abilities. Merc was sole survivor from the actual planet Mercury, using his scientific knowledge to attempt to prevent what destroyed his world. Midnight was sent from a future era to prevent some unspecified disaster(s), sent by Captain Cosmos against the Warrior of Omri. One white skinned, at least in Mercury Man's chemically altered form, the other in all black, with no indication if his shadow-like skin was his actual form. One was preachy and the other solitude. Yet both were derivative of other more successful concepts (think Captain Atom, who already appeared in the self-same Space Adventures 11 issues prior to Merc and would return later for a brief but successful run... and think DC's Obsidian who looked similar yet played off his mystique in a much more distinct way). And that's all he wrote...

Bamm-Bamm Bashes Betty...on Unneeded Purchases...

Team-Up Tuesdays: Shield and Dusty vs the Fang! Part Two

And now we conclude the *ahem* epic battle between Team Shield and the Fang. How will our colorful crusader fair against this mammoth menace? Will he get any closer to solving the mystery of his missing superpowers? Let's take a look under the cover...of Pep Comics #29

Okay, that was cheating! Dusty's patented hop-on-the-neck move distracted the Fang long enough to cause the Shield to out maneuver his foe! Well at least the threat was taken care of... for now... but that is not the end of the Fang. Nor of the Shield, who persists in his attempts to restore his phenomenal physique. Will his uber-science finally work? Continue to watch these pages for further golden age exploits of Joe Higgins and Dusty Simmons.

And just to show that Shield's cross-dimensional contemporary didn't have things easy, this bad guy was adept at sneaking up on sidekicks.

Of course, Charlton had a golden age villain names Yellow Fang that bothered that era's Blue Beetle on a couple occasions. But not big like Mountain Storm. In fact, he was Judo-G.I.'s most persistent adversary as he matched muscle for muscle (though not much mental might, having to be directed by Japanese supervisors on how to corner a diminutive foe).

Tiger found himself alongside his mentor with the upper hand against their obese opponent. During his initial trial by fire, he showed that pure grit and determination made up for lack of mass. Something that Storm and Fang would've done well to consider during their campaigns of chaos.

Team-Up Tuesdays: Shield and Dusty vs the Fang! Part One

The Shield had a modestly numbered but colorful rogues gallery, and this week we focus in on one vicious villain... The Fang! An agent from Japan, his impressive physique is more than a match for a fully powered Shield... so what happens when Joe Higgins discovers that his powers are waning? In what was one of the innovative features of MLJ's golden age comics, we see a character arc continuing through several issues whereby Joe must learn how to reacquire his powers.

So sit back on enjoy part one of our featured presentation:

You may remember that Charlton's colorfully clad super-soldier, Judomaster, also had a crisis involving loss of his vision... and hence an inability to fight well. As in the Shield's case, it was up to Rip Dagger's sidekick Tiger to kick start his mentor back onto the road of heroics:

Part two will be posted later today with the stunning conclusion!

Marvel Mondays: The Captain's Curvacious Cronies

Nightshade debuted towards the middle portion of Captain Atom's 1965-67 run in Charlton Comics, at first merely an athletically skilled costumed sidekick for the cosmic captain, eventually she would come into her own. Gaining an origin as daughter of an alien princess, granted the ability to transform her body into a living shadow, she would use these abilities selectively so as not to tip off any (including Atom) as to her more than human nature. Her solo series in his back pages was short lived.

In 1968, another commander of the cosmos,  Captain Mar-Vell, met a courage and talented young woman named Carol Danvers employed by the U.S. government to uncover the truth about the Kree Captain sent to Earth on a mysterious mission. Instead, she became his partner and, like Atom and Eve Eden aka Nightshade, the two began to express romantic feelings towards one another. It would take nearly a decade until the former security chief gained superhuman powers as Ms. Marvel. At which point, she operated separate of the Captain to stand on her own.

However, perhaps a more direct analogue for Eve Eden over at the House of (rehashed) Ideas was a femme fatale known as Nightshade! In her civilian identity as Tilda Johnson, she was a criminal scientist capable of transforming humans into were-beast that obeyed her command. Undoubtedly the most drastic departure from the Charlton template yet, although she too worked for para-military organizations and encountered her own Captain, America. She wasn't an A-lister.

And so concludes our mini-series for Marvel Mondays. What have we learned, with regards to Marvel's take on Mighty MLJ and Charlton characters? Occasionally, the concept was improved upon, such as the aforementioned Captain Marvel (although he had other influences including the original Captain published by Fawcett Comics). However, the vast majority such as the Human Fly, Scarlet Scarab and Nightshade herself were mere evil copies of the originals. And the heroes cloned after their golden age templates, such as Blue Shield and Comet, ended up a fodder for future death scenes as they never stood well on their own. Hence why we continue to call out to comic fandom and encourage them to look at the classic tales and characters that compose what we here like to call... Charlton vs Mighty MLJ!