House of Mystery #160 (1966)
by Dave Wood & Jim Mooney
This is one of the most significant, but also headache-inducing issues of the original run.
We begin with Robby visiting his cousin and basking in the fame of his superhero identities.
How did anyone manage to take a picture of Mighty Moppet? He showed up in an underground mine and only interacted with gangsters and a couple of policemen.
This issue marks the first appearance of love interest Suzy. She debuts with red hair, but later stories will see her as identical to Supergirl’s civilian identity (it’s mostly the Jim Mooney art).
Robby and his cousin go on a hike to “rock hunt”, which sounds like the nerdier version of bird-watching (SOMEHOW), when he witnesses a catastrophe incoming.
Robby transforms into Giant Boy, in the first time that a previous transformation returns. It won’t be the last, but it’s VERY rare to see it happen.
According to the narration, Giant Boy has super-speed! That wasn’t apparent in his first transformation, where he could only become giant and fly. Since he doesn’t demonstrate it anywhere else, it COULD just be referring to him flying super-fast…
…but considering he can BUILD A WHOLE DAM before the water hits the town, I’m adding super-speed anyway.
That’s not the only emergency for Giant Boy: there’s also an explosion that releases some weird gas in a scientist’s lab.
Unfortunately Giant Boy inhales a huge dose of the gas, causing him to fall off a cliff.
Is it just me, or that second panel feels it’s inspired by Jack Kirby?
Giant Boy survives the fall, but he still took a huge dose of poison. Robby manages to return human, wondering what will happen if he ever turns back into Giant Boy.
I wonder if this was done to avoid readers calling for other hero identities returning.
To get their head off the death of one of the greatest heroes in history(citation needed), Robby takes his cousin and Suzy at the fair where SUDDEN MONSTER!!!
So Robby transforms in the only transformation to give Mighty Moppet a run for his money as the most pathetic one… King Kandy.
And this is why you don’t take candy from strangers, kids: THEY EXPLODE.
King Kandy wastes no time finding the man responsible for these illusions, who wanted to steal a precious jewel from the fair.
King Kandy is both one of the most ridiculous AND most disgusting superheroes.
Not to mention ineffective, because “The Wizard of Light” manages to escape.
At least he gets a kiss out of the girl he has a crush on.
The same girl who, I remind you, really liked Mighty Moppet.
You might think that, considering his name, The Wizard of Light would only have illusion powers. But he also has “Anti-Gravity Light”.
In order to stop him, Robby dials into a pre-existing superhero for the first (and only) time: Plastic Man, of all people!!!
This is significant in many, many ways.
First of all: this is the first DC comic to feature Plastic Man!!!
That’s because Plastic Man is one of the heroes that did NOT originate at DC: he was originally a Quality Comics character, inhabiting the same universe of characters like Phantom Lady, Black Condor and Uncle Sam.
After DC bought the rights to the characters they would end up on both Earth-Quality and Earth-X (it’s complicated).
Quality Comics stopped printing comics in 1956, ten years before this story. Plastic Man would show up on Earth-One in 1968’s “Brave and the bold #76”. So perhaps this Dial H story served as a test to see if the character was popular enough to bring back.
His appearance HERE brings some questions, though. And not just how the dial turned Robby into a pre-existing hero.
“Dial H” doesn’t feature a lot of references to the rest of the DC Universe, but later stories firmly put it on Earth-One. Except Robby considers Plastic Man “a hero of years ago”, which SEEMS to suggest he was still considered a Golden Age hero.
Which would naturally put him on Earth-Two. Which WILL get its own Plastic Man.
Other characters recognize him immediately, so he must’ve been a known hero.
So was Plastic Man active on Earth-One years before he showed up on “Brave and the bold”?
Shocking absolutely nobody, Plastic Man proves himself a better hero than Giant Boy.
He also deduces that The Wizard Of Light is the same super-scientist who “killed” Giant Boy, because there is only one supervillain who is immune to his own weapons.
Sounds legit.
Historical significance: 8/10
First appearance of Plastic Man… well A Plastic Man, if not THE Plastic Man… in DC Comics. Plus first returning transformation AND first Suzy. Plus Robby WILL meet the real Plastic Man after the end of the original series (I will cover that eventually).
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
Only in the Silver Age you could get Anti-Gravity Light.
Does it stand the test of time? 4/10
The Giant Boy part holds up fine. The less said about *sigh* King Kandy, the better. Plastic Man is fine on his own, but he really comes out of nowhere and the idea that Robby can apparently turn into already existing heroes won’t be tackled in the original series. Plus the villain is just meh.
Dial S for SOCKAMAGEE! : 30
For the second time in a row, the catchphrase is used seven times.
Dial I for superhero identities: 13
First time when we add only two identities, Plastic Man and *sigh* King Kandy, since Giant Boy is a returning form. Speking of which…
Dial U for most used identity: Giant Boy (twice)
Dial C for the superpowers count: 21
Giant Boy surprisingly adds super-speed. Plastic Man is pretty straightforward, adding shapeshifting. For King Candy, I’m applying the same logic I did with *sigh* Mighty Moppet and The Squid, counting what he does as “candy creation”. But the bombs feel like they have a different effect (I don’t know any candy that literally explodes), so I ALSO add “candy bomb creation”.
Actually Dr Light did invent something akin to anti-gravity light. It was called magnetic light and had the same effect of pulling someone into the air, although it was more directional than here. He used it against the Atom in the Gardner Fox Atom run to trap him into a light bulb to disintegrate him. So really as long as he can tie it to his light gimmick our good doctor can do anything.
In the post-Flashpoint “Dial H” series, it lays out that the dials were invented to copy heroes’ (and others’) powers and identities (across may dimensions), though some malfunction and steal them. In that series, one of the main diallers, Nelson Jent, dials up the Flash and in the Flash’s comic of the same month, he mysteriously loses his powers for a while. It’s probably the most thought anyone has ever given to the workings of the device, and was almost certainly written to accommodate this issue’s events (even though the new 52 wasn’t exactly beholden to pre-Flashpoint, let alone pre-Crisis, continuity).
Interesting. I prefer the dial to remain unexplained, like some eldritch mystery, but if you HAVE to give it an explanation it’s not a bad one.
Since World’s Finest #239 features Gold, will you add it to the Metal Men retrospective once you’ve reviewed it?
Of course.
According to Julius Schwartz, the Elongated Man was created in 1960 by John Broome and Carmine Infantino only because nobody at DC remembered that they owned Plastic Man since 1956.
And it takes until 1966 before someone uses the character.
Comics history is pretty amazing sometimes.