Challengers Of The Unknown #48 (1966)
by Arnold Drake & Bob Brown
In an unusual move for the Silver Age, at least at DC Comics: the Doom Patrol guest stars on a different series in a two-part crossover.
I don’t know a whole lot about the Challengers. I considered jumping ahead in the hero origins schedule to cover their 1957 debut, but it’s probably funnier to go into this without research and rely on what the Doom Patrol tells us.
After all the main reason to do a crossover is to introduce new readers to other books, right?
And yes, I know the Challengers Of The Unknown are a huge inspiration for the Fantastic Four, it’s the only thing everyone knows about them.
We begin with the Doom Patrol answering to an SOS sent by the Challengers.
After checking that everyone is still alive, Negative Man’s energy body carries two of the Challengers to safety while Robotman carries the remaining two AND Negative Man.
Doesn’t sound particularly efficient.
Chief then puts the Challengers in suspended animation. We already saw that he has the equipment in Doom Patrol stories, so neat continuity.
Chief having a device that can communicate through radio telepathy (???) is a new one.
I’m not kidding about the telepathy aspect, this allows the Challengers to respond!!!
We then move to the Challengers’s private prison, where they torture their prisoners giving them disgusting foods.
Since I’m too familiar with the Challengers, I’m discovering their villains as the story goes.
But I’m already a bit skeptical about keeping these guys inside a volcano considering one of them requires a constant stream of water (not typically found in volcanoes) and the other one is a walking volcano.
I wonder why a supervillain with the name Drabny didn’t become the breakout character of the Challenger rogue galley.
The only one I recognize is Multi-Man.
And that’s because he will eventually join Major Disaster’s Injustice League, which will then have a satirical career as the Justice League Antarctica
But there’s a much more dangerous monster being kept in this prison: a bunny.
I’M NOT KIDDING.
I’m pretty sure this is way more violent than what the Comics Code would allow to show against a human, but bunnies are fine.
And this was all Multi-Man’s plan, with some help from the alien robot.
Rather than freeing the villains, the Challengers are ready do CHOP OFF THE ARM of one of their members!!!
But they eventually decide against it.
Guys, I don’t think anyone would complain if you didn’t actually release ALL the villains!!!
Also, I have the slightest suspicion that Multi-Man doesn’t have magic powers.
You guys aren’t particularly bright, aren’t you?
Once the villains leave, and the Challengers find a way to get rid of the Killer Rabbits.
After saving themselves, the Challengers have a new plan: dying!
By which they mean faking their deaths. It’s a good thing that ALL THE NEWS AGENCIES can fit inside a meeting and agree on everything.
Considering the state of media in DC Comics… sounds legit.
Multi-Man is too interested in rebuilding is giant-sized girlfriend to care.
While pretending to be dead to the general public, the Challengers discover that Multi-Man is building something big.
Presumably bigger than his girlfriend.
Specifically by stealing ships with a GIGANTIC pneumatic tube!!!
They then fight the alien robot underwater, because Multi-Man gave him immunity to his only weakness. SOMEHOW.
You might expect Volcano Man to be a bigger threat, but he’s defeated easily.
You would also expect molten metal wouldn’t provide enough buoyancy to lift a giant monster, but did you really think the actual laws of physics apply here?
Like I said I don’t know much about Multi-Man; he seems to be very versatile! He would probably be more famous if he originated from a more popular series and didn’t look so goofy.
And we’ve finally reached the reason why the Challengers are in a coma when they’re rescued by the Doom Patrol.
It wasn’t the bite of an artificially created super-rabbit, that would’ve been silly: it’s the sting of a giant jellyfish.
Then Robotman is sent on a mission, easily defeating the alien robot…
…and tricking Multi-Man into believing he’s one of the Challengers.
And that’s enough to allow Chief to come up with a cure.
Multi-Man decides to abandon his giant underwater base…
…leaving Drabny behind to die. It should be note that Drabny DID ABSOLUTELY NOTHING IN THIS STORY after escaping from prison.
Also we have THE ALIEN ROBOT saying “that’s the way the pizza crumbles”.
I was expecting the villains to get away with this, but FOR ONCE the heroes are right behind them!
Elasti-Girl also hasn’t done ANYTHING so far, but now it’s her turn.
Which means, you guessed it, a big dumb catfight.
A giant woman tying another giant woman into a knot must be someone’s fetish.
Little known fact: carbon dioxide fire extinguishers cans extinguish a volcano.
Multi-Man is about to retreat…
…until he gets an idea.
Oh for the love of… you’re letting the bad guy go AGAIN???
Yes. Yes they are.
I can’t believe TWO superhero teams were unable to capture THIS GUY.
Historical significance: 0/10
This is technically the storyline that links the Doom Patrol to the rest of the DC Universe, and it has a second part on their own title. But in-universe… this doesn’t amount to anything.
Drabny significance: 10/10
May he rest in peace. Whatever it is he does.
Silver Age-ness: 10/10
Multi-Man already incarnates a whole bunch of Silver Age tropes, but you also have the Challengers being able to control the world media AND a giant underwater city with ship-sized pneumatic tubes.
Does it stand the test of time? 5/10
I’ve read few Challengers stories, mostly from their very early years, and they’re better than this.
The weird stuff is part of the setting, but this is lacking the charm and sense of wander of older Challenger stories. Slightly improved by a couple of surprisingly effective action scenes, but the total lack of ANY tension robs them of the intended effect.
The Challengers are also a weak point: their personalities don’t stand out, especially when compared to the MUCH better fleshed out Doom Patrol.
And Multi-Man CONSTANTLY managing to escape has reached the point of parody at this point. I could excuse it if he escaped thanks to his shapeshifting abilities, but he doesn’t even need to you use those most of the time!!!
Times Multi-Man has escaped: 4
He escapes from the Challenger prison. Then he escapes when they track him in the ocean. Then he escapes from Robotman. And then he escapes at the end.
Multi-Man will be in the Doom Patrol chapter too, so I’m pretty sure he’ll escape again.
Times Robotman has been damaged: 15
Even outside his series he isn’t safe.
Issues when Robotman is never damaged: 10
The Challs hold a special place in my heart. When I was about 12, a neighbor kid left an issue of their series in my backyard. I never found out who left it,so I kept the comic. It featured two stories, one of which involved Red Ryan’s younger brother, Tino, being chased by a monster in his dreams. For some reason, both Red and Tino wore eye patches (I don’t think the reason was addressed in the issue.) I read some later issues and was disappointed that Tino wasn’t a regular character.
The Challs had a very simple premise: Four manly men (a boxer, an astronaut, a scientist, and a daredevil) live on borrowed time after surviving a plane crash and devote their lives to exploring the unknown. They were four ordinary guys who stood out from all the superheroes around them. However, they appeared dated by the time their series was revived briefly in the ’70s.
An ordinary guy who wears a helmet that gives power to his thoughts? Is that describing Drabny or Mento? It’s almost a shame the two helmet jockeys don’t get to meet.
Bryant Alexander is correct. Also, having just reminded myself of what Drabny’s helmet looks like, I can’t help but find the idea of them facing each other hilarious. Fashion statements, those two are not.
Arnold Drake must like playing at expectations coming from size comparisons. Often, as here, he makes the hugest characters the least significant and easiest to defeat.
Between that and how Multi-Man is emulating Beast Boy in this issue, it feels like this issue is a bit hurried. Challengers and Doom Patrol had the same writer and editor, and they seem to have lacked the time to switch gears. Writing two connecting stories with two hero teams and a quartet of exotic foes each must have been demanding.
All the same, this is a good spotlight for the characters, and it is exciting to learn that the Challs and the Doomers can ask each other’s help when necessary.
On a slightly subtler level, it is exceedingly rare for the Challengers to actually need to be rescued by third parties; so much so that most times when that happened the rescuer ended up associating with the team for an extended period. This is not a team used to end the page count without coming up victorious. That they asked for help at all feels like a bit of a stake raiser.
Multi-Man is as close as the Challengers will ever come to a main foe. He plays a key role in the team’s first revival in 1977 after they stopped having new stories in 1970. And yes, he is indeed pretty versatile.
This is not the Multi-Man I know from the early Challengers. Yeah, he originally resurrected from death with a new set of powers because of some alien goo he ingested, but that was a limited-time offer. Once he revived for the (IIRC) third time in that big-headed runt form he gained super-intelligence and could outdo Luthor when it came to crazy inventions (not least of which being his giant robotic “girlfriend”), but that was it. If he died again in that form he was dead (and explocitly worries about it in several stories) and he didn’t have shapeshifting powers or anything like that. Maybe he could have invented something to emulate that effect, but even if he’d kept auto-resurrection as an ability he’d have lost the super-intelligence when he came back, just like he lost his previous powers in each earlier incarnation. Later stories treated him like he was a Resurrection Man copycat, with both the Joker and some Slab guards killing MM dozens of times to play “death roulette” until he manifested a situationally useful power. That might almost have been clever if it weren’t for the fact that far better writers had done that routine in Hitman with the actual Resurrection Man years before. This is a massive retcon that really spoils the multi-part origin story for MM and many of his other appearances where he was still following the rules laid out when he initially appeared.