Random Happenstance

Sometimes, I wish I could pull out a list, like for Previews, of all the books that came out, say, December 1978; so I could see if, oh, Fantastic Four really was 'The World's Greatest Comic Magazine' for that month. I'm pretty sure World's Finest was often an exaggeration, though.

Today we've got World's Finest #254, "Whom Gods would Destroy!" Story by Bob Haney, art by George Tuska and Vince Colletta. The cover by Jim Aparo shows promise: Sinestro, perennial Green Lantern villain, blasting Superman with his power ring; while Supes exhorts a sweaty-looking Batman to "Wake up...or your nightmare of Sinestro destroying the world will come true!" And then inside, Batman is chasing down a Col. Sander's looking scientist, who babbles like a loon, and Batman blacks out.

This is what we call, 'coming down.' Try to relax.

Batman lies down for a little nappy-nap in what appears to be a cobblestone alley, with loose bricks. Urban renewal was a ways away, I guess. He dreams of Sinestro fighting Superman, which is:
A. Weird.
B. Weird, but not creepy weird, thank God.
C. Geez, I think I've dreamed that, after watching Super Friends and mainlining Quik. I miss college.
D. Probably a vacation, after dreaming about his parents' murders for like 30 years.

The scene shifts entirely to Superman, as Sinestro "has just sent every heavy plate glass window in every skyscraper in Metropolis, USA, tumbling down like a billion guillotines towards the throngs below!" And Superman tells himself, "Get off your Super-butt! Do something--!" I'm probably not qualified to judge, but is it a 'Super-butt'? I hope he refers to everything as super, from super-hands to super-feet...man, that's weird.

At super-speed, Supes smashes all the glass into powder...this is one of those things that Superman 'fixes,' and when I say 'fixes,' I mean 'doesn't outright destroy, but leaves in a seriously precarious state.' Several bloggers pointed out in Infinite Crisis, I believe Supes stops a building from tipping over and rights it, then leaves...leaves an assload of structural damage and shattered foundation. Yes, powdered glass would be safer than billions of razor-sharp shards, but...

Oh, sweet Jeebus. What could be better than powdered glass in your eyes? Why not let your kid play in it! Stick out your tongue and catch it! Officer 'Blazes' has a point: I think several tons of powdered glass would indeed keep the crooks at home for a while.

Sinestro seems confused here. After all, all the times he fought Green Lantern, GL never stopped him from destroying Coast City by destroying it first. He leaves in a Spaceman Spiff-looking rocket, presumably made by his power ring, but who knows at this point. Superman starts taking fistfuls of the 'glass snow,' zapping it with his heat vision, and replacing the windows. You might as well replace "glass snow" with "magic dust" or "lobster farts." Same difference.

Batman wakes up, figuring his 'vision of something crazy happening in Metropolis" up to fatigue. Look, Batman, I once was so hungover, I thought a Godzilla marathon on TNT was on CNN; and even that pales in comparison to this. You're not tired. Get help.

Before he can take in the babbling doctor, a carful of goons show up; but even a tired Batman can take out four or five armed thugs. But, as the chapter ends, a sniper takes aim at Batman's back, following orders to kill the doctor rather than lose him. He also plans on killing Batman, but wouldn't they be able to get the doctor back after shooting Batman? Well, when you have a gun already in hand, it probably wouldn't occur to you.


Oh, Great Rao, I'm only on page 8 of this one...sigh. The sniper fires twice, and Batman goes down, dropping the doctor. In the very next panel, Batman, carrying the doctor again, does a standing high jump of at least six feet straight up and over a fence. "Impossible!" exclaims the sniper, and I'm inclined to agree. Batman explains that he had been wearing a bulletproof vest under his costume: I'll grant him walking off being shot twice, since hey, it's Batman. But that jump, carrying another man and with bruised ribs...look, my suspension of disbelief is strong enough to accept two different kinds of aliens and the rest of the insanity in this story. It's not strong enough to do that carrying the doctor.

Letting that go: Batman takes the doctor back to his Batcave, the seventies one that was under the Wayne Foundation building. Hey, is that one still there? Out of nowhere, Batman thinks that it was risky to bring the doctor, Willard, here, since he
knows Batman and Bruce Wayne are the same man! And, right on top of that bombshell, Batman asks the doctor the whereabouts of the brain of Gorilla Boss Dyke! Willard says, aliens took it.

Now that's good crazy: if we had gotten All-Star Batman from Grant Morrison, we might be close to this territory.

And now comes the infodump: when criminal Boss Dyke was executed, Dr. Willard transplanted his brain into a gorilla, although the art isn't clear if it was normal-sized or giant. Dyke's plan was to capture Batman and steal his body, but he fell to his death, like all giant apes. Seriously. If my brain ended up in King Kong, Donkey Kong, whatever, I wouldn't even stand on top of a chair. This is footnoted to Batman #75, listed on GCD as February-March 1953. It may have been reprinted in one of those gorilla specials DC loves.

More recently, World's Finest#251 to be precise; in a plot involving chlorophyll-stealing aliens, Dyke's brain ended up in Batman's body briefly, before Batman was restored and "Willard escaped with the brain of Gorilla Boss." Well, if he's just a brain in a mason jar, he's not really 'Gorilla' Boss, is he? He's just plain old Boss Dyke. Heh, Boss Dyke in Batman's body. Yet another sentence you thought you'd never see, huh? And let the misdirected traffic roll on in...


Oh, hell with this. Let's go back to Sinestro vs. Superman for a minute. Sinestro is still wrecking Metropolis, and Superman thinks that he could use his 'unlimited willpower' (and 'super-modesty') to overwhelm Sinestro's beam, but that would cause even more destruction. Supes is forced to let up, giving the gloating Sinestro more opportunities for demolition, like cutting a bridge in half.

To save cars thrown into the water, Superman has to first "blow a giant bubble of super-breath", then he locks the cars' bumpers together into a chain that he drags to safety. That's like three panels of super-feats that make super-ventriloquism or super-kiss-make-Lois-forget seem completely reasonable in comparison. I don't know much about fluid dynamics, but I know even four cars welded together wouldn't hold up as a chain. Rrr. Let's go back to Batman.

Batman's right there with us, however: he has another blackout, and again sees Superman and Sinestro fighting. He uses a 'neuroserum' to get Willard coherent enough to talk: apparently tired of hiding out, Willard had taken Boss Dyke's brain for a walk in the park, and aliens stole it, doing a number on Willard's own brain in the process. What...why...ok, give me a second here: why did Willard have the brain with him? Well, maybe he didn't feel anyone else could be trusted with it, and he really needed that sunshine to combat his seasonal affective disorder. OK, but what did he keep the brain in? A baby carriage? A Saks Fifth Avenue bag? A turban on top of his own head?

Investigating the scene of the abduction, or would it be theft at this point? Batman, with Willard in tow, notices a bum with a newspaper over his face, and the headline "Metropolis Beseiged Sinestro Outpowers Superman" Maybe the other words or puncuation were too small or cut off. Bigger fish to fry here: Just like in All-Star Batman, events in Metropolis and Gotham City seem to occuring concurrently, yet with enough time for the print media to report on them.

Batman realizes his flashes are actually happening, just in time to get shot. Again. This time, by a guy on a merry-go-round, which would've been quite the coup, if the would-be killer hadn't just nicked Batman's shoulder, then gotten his skull cracked by a batarang. I think Batman broke out the heavy batarang for this guy, it looks about a foot across. I have no idea, how Batman would've made that throw, hitting a guy ducking down behind a horse (like a cowboy in a good western, the guy had skills!) on a moving carosel. Technically, I don't think we see the carosel is moving, but we don't see a lot of background, and we've only seen four people in this park at all. (That would be Batman, Willard, the bum with the newspaper, and the gunman.)

Batman checks the scorch marks of the 'aliens,' and they show as pure yellow on the spectrum analysis. Uh, all right...he realizes Sinestro staged the aliens with his ring, to confuse the issue. Batman realizes Boss Dyke's brain is connected with the fights in Metropolis, and since that brain was once in Batman's head, residual cells must be causing the flashes.

Back in Metropolis, Sinestro releases radioactive steam from a nuclear plant, which Supes then has to eat; then creates a yellow shield over the city that even Superman couldn't penetrate...and maybe a DC historian could tell me what the hell Green Lantern was up to this month. Batman contacts Superman and sends him into space.

Batman somehow uses his residual-link to give directions ("Um...space.") and Supes finds Boss Dyke's brain, which Sinestro has enlarged to planet-size, to use as a "reservoir of will to draw on...!"

Despite being forsworn from taking life, Superman treats the brain like a tumor, and x-rays it to death. Then, he punches Sinestro's ass back to the anti-matter dimension of Qward, which isn't an explosion of positive and negative matter, but more of an inconvenience for him by now.

Superman is glad to have the usual problems back again, and Batman notes that with Willard hopelessly insane (but luckily not scarred, which means he won't escape Arkham) and Boss Dyke's brain destroyed, "Superman and I had our hands full on this amazing adventure, but we never even met!" Take that, Seven Soldiers!

Holy hell, there's at least eighteen kinds of crazy in that story. But, there is some charm to it. Where else but in comics, can a mob boss have a story arc that goes from brain-transplanted-into-gorilla, to pawn-in-alien-chrorophyll-theft to brain-grown-to-planet-size-used-as-will-battery? Nowhere, that's where. And everything is summed up nicely, so even if you didn't have all the back issues, or experience with DC's gorilla fixation, they brought you up to speed.

Plus, I bought this issue for a quarter, yet I had to devote several hours to posting about it. And that's just the opening story, there's four other features in there, including Green Arrow blowing up the Arrowcar, and a Ditko Creeper tale. Can't say I didn't get my money's worth.