There is pretty much zero chance I'll ever collect all of
World's Finest, but I suppose it's not impossible that I'll run out of Bob Haney ones to blog about. Mildly surprised this one wasn't him, though. From 1980,
World's Finest #262, "The Power of the Pi-Meson Man!" Written by Denny O'Neil, pencils by Joe Staton, inks by Dick Giordano.
I would guess O'Neil found some info--like the name--
pi-meson, or pion somewhere and thought that was good enough for today's bad guy, scientist Pincus Bridger, who was irradiated when his experimental reactor blew up. Contaminated and forced to live in isolation, he blamed the mayor and all of Gotham City, for commissioning the reactor: geez, why not blame your high school physics teacher, that'd make about as much sense. Pincus causes havoc with his invisible projection, the Pi-Meson Man; but blind little girl Betsy Pyatt can see him. Pincus decides no witnesses, and tries to burn down her orphanage to kill her. Classy.
Batman quickly comes to believe Betsy can see P-M Man, who chases them even to the Batcave. (He says he doesn't know or care where they are, he just wants to kill the girl; that's O'Neil making a lampshade concession to Batman's secret identity.) Visiting Pincus in his containment cell, Superman realizes he was projecting something, and follows it to the Batcave, but he can't touch him. Superman takes Batman and Betsy to Gotham University's atom-smasher as a trap, first blasting the Pi-Meson Man with particles, then trying to reunite it and Pincus's body, punching him out and cramming him into a lead cell. The final caption indicates the Pi-Meson Man would return, but nope! Well, maybe O'Neil realized pions have a lifetime measured in nanoseconds. This really felt like O'Neil channelling Haney, but the next issue was "
The Final Secret of the Super-Sons!" which seems to draw a line under that type of free-wheeling, somewhat more fantastical story; although Haney was writing Green Arrow that issue.
Also this issue: the conclusion to the Green Arrow
Auntie Gravity two-parter! In which GA does nothing. Black Canary's been captured by Auntie and her boys, one of whom wants Canary instead of a dumb ol' mail-order bride. Dinah may actually be so pissed she yells loud enough to disintegrate her gag, kicks the stuffing out of the boys with her arms tied behind her back, then shouts down Auntie. Not playing today, I see. ("Gravitational Boom-a-rang" Written by Gerry Conway, pencils by Romeo Tanghal, inks by Vince Colletta.) And the ever popular Statement of Ownership, Management and Circulation: Paid circulation, actual number of copies of single issue published nearest to filing date, 85,194. With maybe 137,000 returns! Or allegedly returned...some of those are probably floating around out there.
She's not even done with them there! Geez, I think Canary kicked those guys so hard their sentence will be over before they regain consciousness...
With a name like his, there's no way he was catching on, especially with his power set. Pretty much a good example of your typical nondescript villain of the week basically.
ReplyDeleteI will say it's probably a good thing neither him nor Betsy has been brought back, especially during the Dan Dildo era because there's no telling what horrible thing they'd do to Betsy in the name of being more "gritty & realistic." I'd imagine Psi-mon raping & killing her?
If nothing else, this is the best Joe Stanton art I've seen so far. It DEFINITELY helped that a legend like Giordano inked him. Made it look so good.
I'm actually pretty close to a complete World's Finest (well, the Batman/Superman team-ups at least). Between the various trades and late 70's/early 80's books being pretty common in dollar bins, my biggest gap is the mid 70's (between the Super-Sons and the Dollar Comic era)- only got a few of those. This is one of the better Denny O'Neil WF stories, believe it or not.
ReplyDeleteWell see Goo, it is possible to almost get em all, haha.
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