House of Mystery #170 (1967)
by Dave Wood & Jim Mooney
Believe it or not, but the superhero on the cover is the most normal transformation of the issue.
Robbie and Gramps are on an ocean liner, and they’re STILL continuing the routine about skipping dinner!!!
Also: PLEASE don’t have Robbie’s new transformation be inspired by the word “shuttlecock”.
Robbie randomly overhears a signal about the criminal organization Thunderbolt planning to attack the ocean liner. I thought we were done with these guys after their leader Mr. Thunder was arrested!
However Thunderbolt is not technically going to attack the ocean liner, but rather a nearby ship that is going to salvage an incredibly expensive invention.
This is Whrrr™, a “complex computer” that can transform “plas-metal” into anything… whatever the heck THAT means.
Then Robbie transforms into… this is going to hurt… Baron Buzz-Saw, the world’s first narcoleptic superhero!
I’M NOT KIDDING.
Despite having the power to have functional saw blades around his hands, feet and head, SOMEHOW the sound makes him sleepy.
Is there some wordplay with the word “buzz” that I’m missing here?
Aside from the narcolepsy thing, he’s SO boring he doesn’t even use his own catchphrase.
Thunderbolt notices his approach, so they unleash Whrrr™, which honestly doesn’t get a bad introduction because its first panel isn’t bad at all!
In fact, Whrrr™ could’ve been interesting to see in a better drawn comic. Nothing against Jim Mooney in general, but in this series he’s not giving his best.
Although it’s not entirely his fault: here we have a robot that can supposedly create anything and it decides to attack the enemy by… spitting out hot rivets.
The idea of a superhero whose power make him sleepy is not entirely bad… for a comedic story, sure, but still it has potential… but it should have SOMETHING to do with the power instead of being either completely random or based on wordplay!
Also, is narcolepsy really a disadvantage if his sleep lasts so little time the rivets don’t even have the time to hit Robbie!?
SOMEHOW nobody dies from this.
Thunderbolt then tries to attack the ocean liner, but Robbie stops them.
At first I thought he was creating a new saw to throw, but the caption specifically mentions it’s from his belt so I’m sadly not going to count “saw creation” as a superpower.
At least Robbie makes it to… oh for crying out loud, would you PLEASE allow this kid to finish ONE MEAL!?
At this point, if we get a new gritty reboot version of Robbie he HAS to be shown struggling with bulimia!!!
I did promise we’d get weirder superheroes than Baron Buzz-Off, so I give you… Don Juan.
Faster than you can say “how is THIS a superhero!?”, he’s shown to have a flying sword and… that’s it. That’s his whole deal.
The magic sword brings him to Cádiz, Spain. Which is such a specific location that I kind of wonder if Dave Wood had gone there in vacation or something, because considering this is the Silver Age it’s kind of a miracle this isn’t just “some place in Europe” or something.
There IS a Lord Byron poem where Don Juan travels to Cádiz, though.
So does Don Juan himself get any superpowers? Because he’s not using the sword to track Whrrr™, and I’m reluctant to say the transformation makes him speak Spanish because he’s NOT translating it correctly… it’s LA Máquina, not EL Máquina!
I don’t actually know Spanish. I can, however, detect bulls##t in multiple languages.
Whrrr™ is able to transform into basically anything at this point… why even call it a computer!? That thing might as well be a Transformer by now!
Don Juan is apparently such an amazing swordfighter that he can win a duel against a rocket!!!
Baron Buzz-Saw had a lame weakness, but Don Juan’s Kryptonite are women.
And not the way you think!
Also, Robbie is… what, sixteen at this point? At most?
To save himself from a mob of adoring women… yes, really… Robbie resorts to the final transformation of the issue: Sphinx-Man.
Sphinx-Man has decided to be sneaky, which SOMEHOW fits his powers better than Baron Buzz-Saw, and tails the criminals to the shore…
…and TWO PANELS LATER he’s followed them to Egypt?
FROM SPAIN!?!?
Okay, time for a geography lesson. You might have missed it earlier, but we moved from Cádiz to Málaga which is still in Spain.
So what route would they need to take to get to anywhere in Egypt? By taking the most straightforward route possible, they’d need that boat to travel at least 1,700 miles (or 2,735 km).
That is so long that the route you can make on Google Earth is barely visible in this format.
You could, however, read this a bit differently: the boat only gets them to the other side of the Mediterranean Sea, landing in Morocco, and then they drive to Egypt.
Sounds better, right? Málaga is roughly only 100 miles away from Morocco by sea. Believe it or not but that’s WORSE, because if they did that they’d have to drive 1,700 miles before they even get to Egypt’s border. If they want to get to Cairo, you need to add at least another 380 miles.
And this is a conservative estimate: if you want to avoid driving through hundreds of miles of desert, WHICH YOU SHOULD, the journey would be SIGNIFICANTLY LONGER.
Unless that the story means by the thieves hiding from “the Egyptian police” means that they’re being hunted by the Egyptian police in Morocco?
WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT? They didn’t steal anything in Egypt!!!
Or perhaps Dave Wood thinks Egypt is on the other side of the Strait of Gibraltar!?
I don’t want to play on the “Americans don’t know geography” stereotype, but… REALLY!?
*groan*
Anyway, Sphinx-Man infiltrates Thunderbolt’s lair, and he’s at a disadvantage because he can’t think of any superpower besides being made of stone.
We’ve seen the power to put yourself to sleep and the power to fail at speaking Spanish, but Sphinx-Man has the weirdest power of this issue.
Because if you can’t solve the most well-known riddle in the entire history of riddles…
…YOU’RE BANISHED INTO ANOTHER DIMENSION!!!
And so we end with Robbie dreading to return to Egypt after having murdered the last remaining members of Thunderbolts.
Historical significance: 0/10
Why even bring back Thunderbolt? We were supposed to be done with them.
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
Those are some of the worst superheroes we’ve seen, and easily the worst geography.
Does it stand the test of time?: 0/10
What sucks at the beginning, continues sucking in the middle and ends up sucking overall?
This was a complete trainwreck. Well I guess a shipwreck… why even bother sending Robbie on a cruise if he’s barely on the ship at all!?
Dial S for SOCKAMAGEE! : 76
Five uses, including one “Spinnin’ Sockamagees!”
Dial I for superhero identities: 38
Baron Buzz-Saw, Don Jaun and Sphinx Man. Incidentally, is this the only superhero using “Baron” as part of the name? That’s an anomaly, usually it’s villains who call themselves “Baron”.
Dial C for the superpowers count: 61
Baron Buzz-Saw flies like 99% of Robbie’s transformations, and as discussed he’s not creating new saws… they’re just part of the costume and as such I’m not counting them as powers.
However, his saws DO emit a sound that make people sleepy… well actually they make ONLY HIM sleepy. That is technically a superpower, although I really struggle to find anything less useful than “self-sleeping sound generation”.
Don Juan doesn’t add any superpower, as discussed. An argument COULD be made that his superpower is being irresistable to women, but… he’s still a kid, it’s better to ignore that.
Shinx-Man has a body made of stone and most importantly the power to banish you to another dimension. Which SOUNDS impressive, but you have to fall for a riddle that basically everyone over the age of six has probably heard.
Interesting letters: obligatory H-Dial explanation of the day.
You’re writing a Legion retrospective, so how can you not remember the original super-hero whose powers cause him to fall asleep – Stone Boy?
Also, there actually has been a “grittier” version of Robbie Reed. In the Pfeifer H-E-R-O series, Robbie, as an adult, is revealed to have turned criminal. He breaks out of prison to help defeat a serial killer who has ended up with the H-Dial, and I don’t remember the exact details, but he was pretty messed up. Maybe I’ll dig out my old issues of that series, it really was a great take on the concept.
At least Stone Boy “falls asleep” of his own will.
Which makes me wonder: would Baron Buzz-Saw be accepted into the Subs? I think not.
Eyeful Ethel got accepted as a reserve, so I’m sure Baron Buzz-Saw can at least manage that.
“Don Juan” spelled “Don Jaun”: embarrassing editorial failure, or did Dave Wood intend for “Jaun” to be pronounced “yawn”, thus continuing the theme started by the narcoleptic Baron Buzzsaw? Or was Wood intimating that he was starting to find the DIAL H strip boring?
I guess “buzzzzz” includes “zzzzz” and that’s why it makes him sleepy? It’s the sort of tenuous connection only a sleep-deprived writer on a deadline who’s written enough onomatopoeia to fill a novel would have made, but that category almost certainly includes the writer of this comic.
Luckily the sleep-inducing bug was worked out of the buzzsaw-on-the-hand technology by the time Gladiator started using it against Daredevil…