Category: Comics

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The Worry Wart. One of the characters I encountered early in my exploration of Golden Age Flash stories was Ebenezer Jones, the Worry Wart. In fact, All-Flash #24 (1946) was one of those first two GA Flash books I bid on just to see if I could win. The story in that book referred to previous meetings. If it had been the Silver Age, it would have included a helpful editor’s note telling me “See issue #X,” instead of just a recap.

As I kept watching auctions and looking on sites like the Grand Comics Database, I identified at least two more appearances. I finally tracked down the last of the three in March, and was able to write up a bio of the character.

Who is the Worry Wart? In short, he was an ordinary man who had a case of anxiety so bad it was contagious.

Jones worries about dying in his sleep, and about not getting enough sleep. He gets fired from two jobs because his bosses and coworkers start worrying about every little thing when he’s around.

The Flash gives the Worry Wart his happiness pillsThere’s an odd subtext to the character’s stories, though. The reason he returns to Keystone City is that the Flash had previously set him up with a supply of “happiness pills,” which had run out. In Flash Comics #76 (1946), Ebenezer Jones deliberately overdoses on the happiness pills, causing a euphoric delirium just as contagious as his anxiety.

Looking back on this from 2007, it’s hard not to think of it in terms of the vast numbers of people today taking medications for depression or anxiety. Not to mention people who abuse prescription medications. Or just people who abuse drugs. There’s a disturbing drug-dealer vibe in that panel.

It gets better, though. In the Worry Wart’s first appearance, in All-Flash #15 (1944), the Flash makes him a serum to counteract his anxiety:

The Flash gives Jones a tonic to counteract his anxiety... and it really works.

Yes, that’s right. The Flash gives him a bottle, and he drinks his cares away. No subtext here!

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I haven’t seen 300 yet. But not because I’m not interested in the story.

I hadn’t heard of the Battle of Thermopylae until a few years ago, when I picked up a book called Atlantis Gate, by Greg Donegan. It was a sci-fi/fantasy thriller involving a war across time for the fate of the world. One front was ancient Greece, with one side aligning with the Spartans, and the other with the Persians. IIRC, the Spartans had to protect a gate in the pass until either someone could get a message through, or someone could close it. I actually found that the most interesting part of the book. The rest felt too much like it wanted to be an action movie. (About 2/3 of the way through I discovered it was actually the final book in a series of four. It didn’t grab me enough to pick up the earlier ones.)

Not long afterward, I started reading Harry Turtledove’s Videssos Cycle, in which a Roman legion gets transplanted to a sword-and-sorcery world. Among their number is a Greek doctor, who remarks at one point about the very same battle. At this point I realized that Donegan wasn’t making everything up, and started reading up on the actual battle.

So when I heard about the Frank Miller/Lynne Varley graphic novel, I put it on my wish list. Eventually I picked it up, read it, and enjoyed it. Then I heard they were making a movie, which sounded really promising.

Then the first previews aired, and it looked… well… overblown and hammy. Even the good reviews make it sound like two hours of hack-n-slash.

I think I’ll wait for the DVD.

(Sort of vaguely a response to Warren Ellis’ recent remarks on “Bad Signal” that he hasn’t seen 300 because he read the book—and didn’t like it.)

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[Logo: Wizard World Los Angeles]I went to Wizard World Los Angeles today. I almost went last year, and decided not to—and regretted it when I learned that Sunday (the day I almost went) was sparsely attended. So not only would I have had no problem getting in, but it should be a low-stress experience overall, rather than the insane crowds of San Diego.

The convention itself did turn out to be a nice, low-key experience, and I found some interesting stuff, but getting to the convention was a bit of an adventure. Continue reading →

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Irish and Mexican FlagsI caught a story on The World (PRI) today about Los Angeles band Ollin’s song tribute to Saint Patrick’s Battalion (in Spanish, El Batallón de Los San Patricios)—a group of several hundred primarily Irish Americans who, during the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), left the US Army to fight alongside the Mexicans. They fought fiercely for a year, but came to a bad end: most were captured by the US and executed as traitors.

Cover of Solo #11It reminded me of a story Sergio Aragonés told last year in his issue of Solo (#11). In “Heroes,” he talks about growing up in Mexico, where the San Patricios are national heroes. They have statues, memorials, and a commemorative ceremony every year on the spot where they were executed. After telling the story of how he learned about the battalion, he jumps forward a few decades. Living in the US, with his daughter going to American schools, he wanted to see how she would learn about the heroes of his youth. So he looked through her textbook to the section on the Mexican-American war, and found only a fleeting remark about how a bunch of drunk Irishmen deserted the US Army, surrendered, and were executed.

It was a surprisingly serious story from an artist known for his comedy (some of the other stories in the issue are drop-dead funny), and an interesting commentary on how nationalism shapes our views of history, with one side elevating the battallion, and the other trivializing them.

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[The Thinker]After almost 1½ years, my Golden-Age back-issue hunt finally netted a relatively cheap copy of All-Flash #12, the first appearance of the Flash villain, the Thinker. It’s an odd read, because the origin of the Thinker (a mob boss who plans his heists very meticulously) is interwoven with a slapstick story of the Three Dimwits.

All-Flash #12 (Fall 1943)The Thinker story is played more or less as a straight super-hero vs. organized crime story. I’d summarize it, but the Comics Archive has already written it up in their article on the Thinker. Now, imagine the first five paragraphs over there interwoven with a Three Stooges film and you’ll get the idea. The Dimwits end up buying a restaurant heavily in debt to the mob, and accidentally make salads out of an alien plant that make people turn invisible.

It’s incredibly silly, but it ties into the other half of the story: The original mob boss’ henchmen are caught robbing the Dimwits’ restaurant, so he calls in the Thinker to solve his problem before they can rat on him. And of course, once the Thinker takes over, he’s mighty interested in these salads that turn people invisible.

And yet, the feel is so completely different that it seems like two different stories.

The Three Dimwits

An unexpected discovery was a reference to the planet Karma, where the alien plant comes from. I’d seen two other references in other Golden-Age Flash stories, so it’s clearly part of the background mythos. This is one reason I’ve been looking for the source material. It’s relatively easy to find info on the leads, or the major villains, but the minor supporting characters who appear in three or four issues—Deuces Wilde, Evart Keenan, Dr. Flura, Ebenezer Jones—are mostly forgotten.

On a related note, while looking up the Thinker’s other appearances, I discovered that one of the non-Flash titles I’d been looking for, All-Star Comics #37, was reprinted in The Greatest Golden-Age Stories Ever Told—a book I already had. I felt bad that I hadn’t actually read the entire book, but that meant I could cross off two items from my wantlist instead of just one.