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August - September 1964 |
"Remember Fun-Land, where the Challengers were involved in one of their most unforgettable adventures?" (Come on. They maybe saw future kids.) Rocky enters the tent of Madame Zaddum, the fortune teller. "Wouldn't want Ace, Red, and Prof to know I sneaked out here for another look at our kids in the future. Man, they'd think I'd flipped!" The other guys are waiting. They all want a peek. Madame Z concentrates. In the crystal ball, past "the cloud of time", the Challengers see a man. "Skokie Johnson! But we nailed him only yesterday!" (So he's on their minds?) |
Skokie hijacked a "capsule containing a top-secret formula." He buried the capsule before the Challs caught him. But how is he young? In the "greatest prison escape of all time," Skokie discovered an old book in the prison library that held the Aztec's Fountain of Youth elixir except for one key ingredient, which Skokie figured out. The book page is soaked with the formula. Dunking the page in plain water, he drinks the elixir - - and turns as young as the day he arrived at prison 25 years ago. Skokie told the guards "an old bald-headed convict" knocked him out and escaped. Skokie is escorted out the door. Lusting for revenge, he packages the last of the elixir to mail to the Challengers. Once opened, it will spray and revert them to children. "They'll be helpless to stop me again, ever! Revenge is sweet!" |
Meanwhile, in the crystal ball, the Challenger boys practice trapeze tosses. Rocky notes, "Ha! Look at my Roxanne I mean, Roxy punchin' that bag like a champ!" Gray-haired Ace and bald Rocky greet June, who in the mysterious ways of women is still a brilliant redhead. Red's have curls gone white. Prof has gray sidewalls and glasses.  Skokie lurks outside, watching the mail arrive. "I'll come back after they've been changed to helpless kids! Ha, ha!" |
Young and old are in uniform. Young Ace notes the dads quit "20 years ago" (1969?) but they're "going on a TV charity tour of some places where we saw action in the old days!" Roxy promises to "play it cool", but refuses a kiss. "Please, Daddy-o! The other kids'll think I'm a sissy!" The elders catch a plane. The mail is delivered to Young Ace. He puts it in a cupboard, next to his mother's ticking watch, as the narrator notes. The kids head for "our own Challenger Mountain out back on the hill!" Skokie chuckles. "The elixir worked again! I reduced the Challengers to children!" He can recover his million-dollar capsule "and they can't stop me!" Except for one small glitch. The 1989-90 World's Fair is being built over his capsule site! |
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Skokie grabs a shovel and finds the stolen cylinder. "I didn't even know what was in it! I'd better take a look-see at my million-dollar prize!" He gets a sur-prise. A vaporous silver-green phantom rises from the cylinder! Skokie runs! The news goes out. Soon the Challengers kids helo after the monster. And the elder Challengers? Stranded in a forced landing with the radio conked out. The kids declare "This is a clear-cut case for the Sons of the Challengers and a Daughter!" People panic as the Phantom storms through a giant globe, dissolving a path. "Maybe we can blow it apart!" The kids drop baby bombs, but the Phantom fills with hydrogen and floats. |
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Paul Haley suggests electric spark guns to ignite the hydrogen. Nope. The Phantom flares with xenon used in camera flash bulbs and blinds them. Skokie laughs. "Look at the little kids thinking they can do a man's job!" The elder Challs repair their jet and board. The radio announces their kids battle a "Chemical Chameleon" at the World's Fair! "Give 'er the gun, Ace!" |
The Phantom, or Chemical Chameleon, (or Metamorpho prototype) glows with thulium to project X-rays. The kids look like skeletons. Young Ace gets an idea from a giant wind tunnel fan. "You mean, disintegrate it with wind?" Roxy notes they better work fast. It's changed again!  The Phantom uses "samarium elements" to scorch a laser their way. The kids aren't strong enough to manhandle the wind tunnel controls. "One side, pipsqueaks!" yells Rocky. "Daddy-o!" The giant fan blows the Phantom to shreds. The crystal ball switches to Ace's house, where a package gets pitched out a window. Rocky thought the package was a bomb because it was ticking. He didn't see June's watch alongside. |
Ace snaps, "You destroyed the last of the elixir! We could have been young again!" Nope. Madame Zaddum points. A cop arrests Skokie Johnson, who's old again. The elixir wore off! And their kids? "The crystal ball has clouded again. The drama is ended." The guys wonder. "Did we really look into the future? Or was it some kind of hynopsis? Let's return some day! Maybe we'll find out for sure!" But they never did. |
"Rocky, the Genius Challenger" |
The team cruises after"Wizard Welles, the best scientific mind in the underworld!" He's got enough material to build the biggest electronic brain ever. (Today we'd call it a "computer".) With the "radio-surgery" material Wizard stole, he could transfer the e-brain's knowledge into his own. Rocky crows, "Wowee he'd be a living library!" Ace, Red, and Prof will crash the door. Rocky takes the roof. Through a skylight, he sees Wizard ready a machine. Crashing into the lab, Rocky shoves Wizard aside. "This is the smartest thing I've done all day!" |
Wrong. Rocky is brain-blasted by lightning. CRACKLE!  |
Wizard screams, "You got the energy charge instead of me! You idiot!" But Rocky's far from an idiot. His brain has expanded ten-fold. He collapses. His pals rush. "Thank goodness, he's alive!" Wizard pulls a ray gun of "amplified light" (a laser) the machine designed and sends the Challs packing. "Sure. You win this round." They rush Rocky to the hospital. He faces "certain death" from electrical burns. Under bandages, Rocky moans, "Don't get into a flap, Doc." He spells out how to increase the drug's potency. "It sound ridiculous," says the doctor, but... One tense hour later, Rocky's back in uniform, big-brained and healthy. "I gave the docs a formula for renewing morbid tissue. I still haven't perfected it, or I'd have recovered 17 minutes earlier." |
Oh, and the experiment Prof's stuck on? "Try increasing the acid base by 2.2% and join the molecules under 800 degrees !" Prof is staggered. "Is this our Rocky talking?" Red's tricky antenna? Another solution. "Now I'm due to lecture the pill pushers on my theory of virus infections!" "Hey, slow down!" chides Ace. Rocky might be a "walking encyclopedia", but Wizard is still on a "super crime wave, so there's no chatting with eggheads." As they arrive at Wizard's lab, Prof asks, "What's the rush? He'd have to leave his ten-ton electronic brain behind! He couldn't move that!" Yet Wizard's building floats away. Rocky boasts, "Simple enough! You'd call it anti-gravity! I call it the Rocky Davis effect after my name!" Rocky then offers to explain Prof's experiment in simple terms. Back at HQ, Rocky tinkers with the jet engine to get 38% more efficiency. He shows Red how to reduce the heat factor in a radio. But big dome is a big snot. |
The radio announces red snow blankets downtown. Rocky knows how to counteract it. "Let's cut out, men!" Downtown has people frozen in their tracks. "The Wizard means to ransack a city of frozen' people!" No fear. Rocky assembles a gadget from an empty milk bottle, a cork, a transistor radio, and an old key; warns to cover their eyes, and lobs it. |
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A flare like "a second sun" melts the red snow. "This stuff is way beyond simple fusion and fission! I'll tell you all about it someday when you grow up!" The Wizard lands on his anti-grav platform and heads for Steward Chemicals. "Watch out!" warns Ace, "He's a real trick character!" Silver spheres in Wizard's hands generate a "mobile force field" that bounces the guys away. Rocky recognizes it "operates on an ultrasonic principle," and dashes off. |
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Wizard steals a sack of chemicals and laughs as he walks past the Challs. Rocky runs and flicks green powder on the platform. Wizard zooms off. Red complains, "What kind of phony genius are you?" "You cats just don't dig," sneers Rocky. "I only wanted to coat his flying saucer with a radioactive powder!" A baby transceiver "will lead us to the real trouble maker The Brain itself!" Red moans, "I hate to admit it - but you are a genius!" |
Rocky gets a list of the stolen chemicals. "Disasterville!" At Wizard's lab, the guys finds the machine protected by a force field. It works on the final stages of an "ultimate weapon". Rocky sends the guys to track radio signals and find Wizard. Striking a "Thinker" pose, he'll out-think the machine! (Who says comics aren't educational?)  |
A tape scrolls. "IDLE BOASTS ARE MEANINGLESS TO ME I HAVE NO HUMAN EGO" Rocky snaps, "You electronic numbskull! Prepare to meet your master! I'm gonna think you right into the ground!" (As seen on the cover.) Rocky calls the Challs. He's almost got the formula. Eavesdropping, Wizard orders the machine to think faster. The computer gripes, "CANNOT UNDERSTAND HOW HE FOUND FORMULA BEFORE ME BUT I WILL NOT FAIL, MASTER... I'LL WORK FASTER... I MUST BEAT HIM..." The machine explodes. BA-WHOOM! Rocky's back to normal. He never did discover the formula. "That was a fake claim to make the machine drive itself faster and blow up." They're not sure if the explosion cured Rocky's condition or it just wore off. Either way, Red's glad. "We've got our own Rocky back - beautiful but dumb!" He ducks with, "Hey, wait! I was only kidding!" |
Comments The Sons story wastes multiple pages over Skokie's elixir, then throws in preposterous coincidences with him wanting to revert the Challs to kids. Say what? And the kids repeatedly fail to stop the Phantom. We expect some kid-smart solution and get nothing. The Genius story has the guys chasing a pre-supervillain who wants a never-explained ultimate weapon. Rocky's new look is cute, but he just plain "out-thinks" the machine? And why must everyone who's a genius be an insufferable snot? Why are Americans so anti-intellectual? Compare these tepid efforts to what Jack Kirby was throwing at the Fantastic Four that month. Makes you wonder what greatness the Challs might have achieved.  |
CHALLENGERS' MAIL CHUTE posts a strange letter. Bob McKinley said "Beachhead U.S.A." and "Time Bomb on Holdout Island" reminded him of the great Audie Murphy, most decorated soldier of WWII. (And your point, Bob?) "Chit Chat from the Challenger Mail Chute" praises "The Giant in Challenger Mountain" and promises of a diagram of Challenger HQ. Another fan wants the chemical from "The Giant" retrieved from the Marianas Trench and used again. Many fans who wrote "should be pleased to see the return of the Challengers' kids in this issue". A private message to Skip and Gary Kleker says "June is a brunette." (Someone should tell the colorist.) As for pinup requests, "Bob Brown has turned in the artwork, which is now being processed by the printer. Patience, please!" (Never saw a purple-suit pinup. Anyone?) "And a warm welcome to Ken Manning, Morristown, NJ, whose father bought him his first copy of CHALLENGERS and is now a confirmed fan." |
One fan joins "the TV casting game", suggesting Rod Cameron for Rocky, Van Williams for Prof, Steve McQueen for Ace, and Chuck Connors for Red. (We'd instead cast Steve as Ace, Van as Red, Rod as Prof, and Chuck as Rocky, but to each his/her own.)  |
This issue got a house ad in other comics.  |
The Public Service Ad reminds us to take a "prescription" for a safe summer. "Look before you leap," Bob learns when he gets hurt a few times. Nowadays DC continues public service ads, such as their "Tobacco is Wacko" campaign. A "Cap's Hobby Center" cartoon by Murray Boltinoff is always fun. |
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