My Greatest Adventure #84 (1963)
by Arnold Drake & Bruno Premiani
In case you’re wondering why I have a counter for how many times Robotman is damaged, this is the kind of crap he runs into.
We begin with a couple of ancient artifacts being stolen.
Chief is having a rough week.
Ah yes, the best way for superheroes to fight crime: letting a computer do all the work.
These omniscient super-computers from the 50s and 60s never cease to amaze me.
This one was somehow able to deduce that General Immortus didn’t die in the first Doom Patrol story because he had an escape capsule hidden somewhere.
Something that Chief, who has extensive knowledge of the General and was in fact the one to program all that information into the Doom Computer, wasn’t able to do?
Sounds legit.
General Immortus is SO old that knows how to read Ancient Babylonian.
Also: Elasti-Girl suddenly wearing one glove for absolutely no reason.
After using “Elasti-Woman” and “Automaton” a couple of times, from this story forwards the superhero names are established.
Notice that Negative Man is at least consistent in being annoyed at codenames: the Doom Patrol members regularly call each other by their real names, and TECHNICALLY “Negative Man” is the energy being, not the guy with the bandages.
The team then stops the General’s goons from stealing another Babylon Stone. Negative Man thanks to his powers…
…and Robotman with a freaking MACHINE GUN. (???)
Except he can no longer control his body.
Except he can still talk. What kind of sense does that make!?
The reason is that, of course, General Immortus is now remote-controlling Robotman.
Despite the second Doom Patrol story establishing that his brain is pretty well isolated from radio waves.
Chief having installed a tracker in Robotman’s body is in no way creepy if he told him.
He DID tell him, right? Right?
General Immortus then has Robotman fly him to specific coordinates to South Africa.
That’s actually correct! It’s VERY rare for a Silver Age story to get ANYTHING geographically correct, but at least this one checks out.
This is the source of the General’s fortune: a completely automated giant mine.
Hey, so THAT’S where the Teen Titans cartoon got the idea when it showed the Brotherhood of Evil’s base was in a forest full of robots for their Doom Patrol episode! That’s pretty cool!
I wish more immortal supervillains were shown to think in the long term like this. Granted, even General Immortus won’t do this later, but still.
Okay so now Robotman is particularly vulnerable to being controlled by radio waves, instead of being well-protected against them.
So General Immortus has him on a leash, LITERALLY.
The rest of the team finds Robotman thanks to Chief’s tracker, and they find that Robotman has now been encased in lead (!!!) to protect anyone else from jamming the controls.
Notice that A) he survives B) he can still move C) somehow the General considers this a good idea.
Sooo… you always have to be near him AND if anything happens to that cable, even incidentally, you just lost your personal super-slave.
Instead of commanding Robotman to kill the Doom Patrol, General Immortus just leaves with his personal plane. And doesn’t even notice the stowaway.
As for the Babylonian Stones, they provide the location to a 500 million dollar prize. Which would be more than 5 billion dollars in 2024.
The location of the ruins of Babylon is not as precise as South Africa’s. I guess Iraq doesn’t exist in the Doom Patrol universe?
The General’s target is the treasure of a Sumerian ruler that lived 7,000 years ago.
He refers to him as Sumu-Abu, which I guess could be a different spelling for Sumu-abum, the first king of Babylon.
If that’s the case, he’s estimated to have died ither in 1817 BC or 1883 BC. Even with the most generous estimation, that would have been 3,846 years before 1963.
Arnold Drake clearly did SOME homework for this story, but if he wanted to go THAT far he should’ve talked abut Sumerian kinds, not Babylonian ones, since the Sumerian civilization DID start that far back.
Granted, while I’m really interested in Mesopotamian history (as you can probably tell from this tangent), I don’t know how much the chronology was established or accessible in 1963.
General Immortus has Robotman open the tomb, and speaking again of history: since Drake went to Babylonian kings, they would’ve had access to chariots. But if this king really ruled 7,000 years ago, then he was REALLY thinking forwards because chariots wouldn’t really be a thing until roughly 2,000 BC.
Since Elasti-girl sneaked inside, she’s able to get Robotman’s attention.
So… what exactly was the reason for letting Robotman in control of whatever he uses to talk?
Elasti-Girl manages to get herself caught before she can disconnect the wire.
Great job, Elasti-girl.
Time for Negative Man to save the day!
Fantastic use of the layout to keep up the suspense!
General Immortus SOMEHOW manages to escape, because Negative Man might be able to move at the speed of light but he can’t catch up to a guy who looks like he’s 7,000 years old.
I’m no scientist, but… wouldn’t the electrical signal have LESS resistance inside the wire than in the atmosphere? Isn’t that kind of the whole reason for using wires in the first place???
Historical significance: 0/10
Not the last time we’ll see General Immortus.
Silver Age-ness: 2/10
Aside from the relative goofiness of Robotman on a leash, not really. The science is questionable, but by DC Silver Age standards this is hard science.
Does it stand the test of time? 8/10
Today you would absolutely need to give General Immortus more ways to keep the Doom Patrol away, particularly Negative Man. But other than that, it’s still pretty solid.
Times Robotman has been damaged: 3
I doubt Elasti-girl’s cleaning him with a steel wool is the only repair Robotman needed, so I’m counting it.
Issues when Robotman is never damaged: 2