Challengers of the Unknown 55
April - May 1967

"Taps for Red"

Cover: Bob Brown
Editor: Murray Boltinoff
Writer: Arnold Drake
Artist: Bob Brown
24 pages
12¢

Characters: Ace Morgan, Rocky Davis, Prof Haley, Red Ryan. Villains: Villo and Brainex.  The League of Challenger-Haters: Multi-Man, Multi-Woman II, Kra, and Volcano Man.  Tino Manarry (Martin Ryan).

Synopsis: To stop the Challenger-Haters from destroying the Earth with volcanoes and earthquakes, Red Ryan triggers a counter-charge and sacrifices his life.

Story and art © DC Comics.

Much text generously supplied by DarkMark's Comic Indexing Domain!

"This is the story they thought comics could never handle!  They said 'the kids' aren't ready for raw meat like that!  They said no comic mag can survive that kind of yarn!  Well, they underestimated you, our readers - and the survival factor of the Challengers of the Unknown!

"Read it NOW - remember it FOREVER!"

TAPS FOR RED!

Zooming along in the Gallopin' Gizmo, Ace congratulates Prof and his "super radar-scope".  He's found a flying saucer.  "We're about to corner a real UFO!"

Uh, no.  It spreads "the grand-daddy of all smoke screens".  The only way to trail them inside "that soup" is to split.

The Gizmo splits.  Three "rocket jeeps" blast loose of the "mother ship".  Rocky goes high and Red goes low.  The boxer sings, "And I'll be in Scotland before ya!"

Fanning out, the boys surround the UFO and force it to descend.

On the ground, the UFO opens like a clam shell.  "But that's no clam stepping out of it, Daddy-O!"

Rocky bursts out laughing as "the original Mister Five-by-Five emerges" - a short square robot.  Ace warns to knock off the laughter "until we see what kind of an act this metal midget is breaking in."

"With a thunderous rush of pneumatics", the box expands into a giant robot.  Which booms, "Hear me, fool!  My appearance on Earth must not yet be disclosed!  Therefore - you must die!"

Rocky has an answer for "Collapse-O!"  He punches it.

And almost breaks his hand.  "Yeow!  This fink sure ate his Wheaties today!"

Red aims for the head.  Grabbing a branch, he pole-vaults for a roundhouse kick - but the robot snaps the pole with a flick of the finger.

Prof and Ace grab the rest of the tree.  "The old battering ram routine in the belly!"  But the robot shakes them off the tree "like two ants on a toothpick!"

Rocky laments they've been "kayoed by Collapse-O".  Ace yells that "Rock-Head" has come up with a great idea.  Red, "our best broken-field runner", will play rabbit to the metal hound.

Taunting the robot, Red leads it a merry chase.  Toward a cliff, where he grabs a rope and climbs to his buddies, who jump...

... so 700 pounds' worth of plummeting Challengers squash the robot like a jack-in-the-box.

A delta-rocket approaches!  The Leaguers activate the A-Battery to destroy it.  A "bundle of laser beams" fire at the oncoming jet - which bends the beams back.  The Leaguers activate B-Battery of "ultrasonic waves".  But the jet fires "a precise anti-sonic ray" and counters the weapon.  "Cease fire!  We have to admit him!"

Villo, the pilot, notifies Brainex that the "teacher just ran up the white flag."  The computer answers, "Naturally, old sock!"

Entering the evil lair, Villo brags, "Challenger-Haters, this is the luckiest day of your lives!  I, Villo, the craftiest, cleverest, most evil villain on Earth, have agreed to be your leader!  What do you say?"

The Leaguers laugh themselves sick.

"You overdressed idiot!" yells Multi-Man.  "You have nothing to offer us!"

The League could use Brainex, the super-computer.  Villo sneers.  No way.  "You're just a sad collection of second-rate crooks!  So long, losers!"

Villo - surprise! - lies to Brainex.  "They said I could be their leader if I dumped you!"  Kra is probably jealous.  "Touching, old shoe!"

Meanwhile...  Unsuspecting all the trouble that's brewing, the Challengers work down their priority list.  They visit the "new pad that alien egghead knocked together for us!"

It's Scientist X's collection of "super super-weapons" bequeathed in their new underwater headquarters  (COTU 53).  So far Prof's only explored sub-level 1.

Inside, the Challs look down level after level after...  "Great ghosts!  How far down does this thing go, Prof?"

No idea.  So far Level 1 sinks 1200 feet beneath the ocean floor, "and that's just the beginning!"

Mean-meanwhile, the League of Challenger-Haters grumble.  "Imagine that costumed crumb calling us second-rate!"  Multi-Man would blow him, and the Earth, sky-high.  Except...

Kra laughs his rusty robot laugh.  "So that's why you said you could kill the Challengers, but we'd die too."  Kra then points out "there are 20,000 inhabited plants that I know of... with nice dumb friendly people who'd be glad to let you be Mister #1."

Huh?  "Who needs Earth?"  Why not blow it up and go somewhere Multi-Man can be king?  Big laughs.  "We'll do it!  In 30 days, all the time I need!"

Yep.  Multi-Man's note says he'll destroy the world in 48 hours, but not how.  The Challengers stand at attention.  Prof admits MM doesn't bluff.  Nor will he use "old hat" weapons like gas or germs.  "Those aren't his style."  A diplomat states, "We have only 48 hours to out-think him.  After that, all thinking stops on Earth!"

Speak of the devil...  Far away, Multi-Man drinks his latest batch of Liquid Light for "his most difficult change of all."

Choking, freezing, MM becomes an ice being who exists at absolute zero.  "Indispensible to the final stages of - Operation Eternity!"

As hours tick by, the story splits the screen...

Prof demands his buddies think!  "Stop blowin' your top, Prof!  You're not gonna put a lid on Multi-Man if flip your own!"

MM, the frozen genius, has the answer.  "It was there all along - right under my nose!"

"Kra?" wonders Prof?  "His alien knowledge is the key?"

No.  Volcano Man is the answer, says MM.  "For inside you is something possessed by no other being!"

"Hold it!" barks Ace.  "What about Volcano Man?  Wouldn't he know more about Earth's volcanic structure than any other being?"

Yep.  MM has found the "precise nerve center of Earth's volcanic system... to blow every volcano simultaneously!"

The UN surrenders via TV broadcast.  "We can no longer risk the world in a gamble against cruelty and cunning!"  People are outraged and resigned.

Ice-MM cuts in with his own broadcast.  "I'm not operating a bargain basement!  The world is finished!  I'll prove I'm a greater than Villo, the greatest villain in the world!"

Then the League sinks in a mine elevator for "the Big Bang!"  Three holes drilled from the "nerve center" will channel vibrations to activate the entire volcanic chain that girdles Earth - "and shake it apart!"

MM fires up a laser drill - and Multi-Woman yells, "We have visitors!"

Challengers rain from the sky in parachutes!  And not one to waste an opportunity, Rocky kicks Kra's robot head.

"That is not the way to treat my ally!" shrills the giant robot-woman.  Multi-Woman grabs Rocky's 'chute shrouds.  "Now dance, puppet!  Before this parachute becomes your funeral shroud!"

Three Challs thump on MW.  "Forget it, lady!  Rocky can't dance worth a darn!"

For the second time in this adventure, MW gets her chest plate ripped open.  Three struggling Challs pin down  the "queen-size yo-yo" while Prof lobs in a baby bomb.

BARABOOM! goes the robot woman.

Rocky snatches up - Yuck! - a giant female arm like a baseball bat.  "Now, Kra baby, let's see your fast ball!"

Rocky pounds the robot.  KALOING!  BALOONG!  "What's a'matter, Chicken Little?  Don't like it when the sky is falling down, hah?"

But now comes the new menace of "Harry Hotfoot" and "Frosty the Snowman" - Volcano Man and Ice-Multi-Man.

"I'll stop you cold!" cackles Ice-MMan.  And freezes three Challs in place.  Prof counters with a capsule of compressed hydrogen.  It pops above MM, combines with oxygen in the air, douses the Ice-MMan with water, and he's a statue.  "Multi-Man on the rocks!"

Similarly, three Challs are frozen to the spot.  Volcano Man charges - and thaws them so they dive free.

Kra is down, and Volcano Man.  Multi-Woman is in pieces.  Ace brags, "I'd say we put in a pretty good day's work, men.  With no overtime."  All they need do is -

FRRZZ!  The villains disappear in a blaze of light!  "Jumping Jupiter!"  One guess..

The super-villains swirl into Villo's Villa, snatched by Brainex's V-beam.  The host brags, "Thought you could do without me, eh?"

"OK, so you got lucky, you windbag!" growls MM, who's lost his ice powers.

Actually, Brainex "saved their necks" with his V-beam.  Villo snarls, "Technicalities!"

Enough "stupid bickering".  MM pushes a remote button to start the volcanic eruptions.  They have 60 minutes to blast off in their rocket ship.  Villo and Brainex can join them.

Back down the shaft, Prof has the "precise directions on each of those tunnels that M-M dug to carry the shock waves from here."  So let's "hotfoot it out of here."

The elevator cage zips up the shaft.  "We're in luck!"

"Luck, my foot!"  Rocky is busting a gut to haul up the cage by hand!

The volcano blows.  "A gasser!"  And Prof reports there's "only one way to beat those three shock waves around the world!"  They jet toward their new base.

Things happen fast...

At their underwater base, with fifteen minutes to spare, Rocky gets teleported to Italy, landing with a WHUMP!

"Right on target!  I better stop calling Prof, 'Dr. Useless!'"

He carries a satchel charge and detonator.  He can see the shock wave approaching, times it just right, and fires the charge.  "It worked!  It didn't stop the shock wave, but split it up - weakened it and turned it away from the volcano!"

"Hope Ace and Red are as lucky," he muses.

In the Aleutian Islands, Ace is "just as lucky."  His shock wave shatters.  "Hope Rocky and Red made it too!"

In Turkey, Red's luck runs out.

His charge goes off after the shock wave has passed.  "Something wrong with the timer!"

Even if Ace and Rocky stopped their shock waves, millions could die in this hemisphere.  "Gotta stop it!  And there isn't a second to lose!"

All alone, Red doesn't hesitate.  "Can't trust the timer [on the backup charge].  Only one thing left to do - set it off by hand as the shock wave hits!"

"Man - this is a lonely way to go!  Didn't even get a chance to write my memoirs - or give Rocky one last boot!  Well, that's the way the cookie crumbles!"

Click!

KA-WHOOM!

Ace, Rocky, and Red regroup - and wait, and wait, and wait.

Ace stammers, "There's no other answer!  If Red were alive, the T-Beam would have brought him back!  Our boy is - gone!"

"I won't buy it!" Rocky roars, and punches the wall.  "I won't buy it - Yaagh!"

Ace pins him.  "That's the way it is!  You crack up now and you'll be spitting right in the face of everything Red stood for!"

Prof adds, "You want to remember Red?  Do it by grabbing the Chall-Haters!"

Soon, the three surviving heroes rush Villo's mobile headquarters.  Why didn't Kra lift them off Earth?

Why not?  They couldn't load Brainex, and Villo refused to leave him/it.  "Sentimental and stupid," says the computer, "but touching."

The super-villains are arrested, we guess.  It's not shown.

Red gets a full military funeral with hundreds in attendance.  Taps for Red.

"So long, Red!" think the guys in silence.  "You were the best there was!  There'll never be another like you, buddy!"

And the story should end there...

"But across town, a strange new fiber is being woven into the lives of the Challs..."

Girls mob a theater where "The Teen Idol - Tino Manarry" is playing.  Who the heck is he?

Tino sings.  Girls swoon.  Cops swear.  "This kid, at 17, hasa patented 147 engines he invented!  Worth millions!"  "So why not retire and save the cops some headaches?" grouses his partner.

Backstage, Tino tosses his guitar.  He'll play for Sinatra's charity, but cancel The Man from U.N.C.L.E.  "I've got too much else to do!"

One item is "the peace corps bit".  Tino has designed an all-purpose vehicle for backward countries.  But he's got a bigger plan when he's alone.

He's holds a picture of the four Challengers, with Red crossed out.  He won't rest "until I make sure - the last Challenger is dead!"

Even the narrator teases the reader.  "Who can ignore that kind of teaser to lure him to next issue?"

Comments

There are, believe it or not, a lot more jokes salted in the first half.  We just couldn't include them all.

Of course, we know Red comes back.  But we didn't know it THEN.  The story was a shock to the readers.  Really, comic book characters didn't die.  The only parallel was Lightning Lad in the 30th Century, and Menthor in T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents.  But in conventional comics, no.

It was a shock to the DC editors too, because they were deluged with letters.  So many, they had to bring Red back.  But that's another story...

And what amazing restraint on the Challs' part that they don't kill the League for killing Red.  Instead they lock them up - again - on Challenger Island.  Nowadays?  Modern "heroes" would torture the villains to death slowly.  The Challs were law-abiding guys.

I wonder how June Robbins felt about  Red's death?  And why she didn't put in an appearance?  Or is she in that crowd scene?  Things happen so fast in this action-packed tale Red's funeral is one panel!

In the letters column, praise for The Dreadful Dimension-Man and the batty Incredible Iron Dictator from COTU 53, and for "kookie bald guys" in general from long-time writer Irene Vartanoff of Lake Forest, IL.  Gary Skinner of Columbus, OH pens a poem to the Challs.  Charles Anderson of Minneapolis, MN wishes the Dictator didn't resemble "the most formidable, infamous fink who ever lived." 

Jay Battmer of Minneapolis, MN demands a picture of the Challs and the Gallopin' Gizmo.  "The photo's en route," say the editors, "but their mechanics are top-secret, so would you settle for a slightly used yo-yo?"  (So what picture is this, we wonder, and where can we get a copy?)

Challengers Chit-Chat from Ray Wexler of Brooklyn, NY.  John Stewart of San Antonio, TX and Barry Eller of Spencer, NC have comics to sell and swap.  Wayne DeWald and Gary Brown, USF students of Tampa, FL offer free copies of their fanzine COMIC COMMENTS for a 5¢ stamp.  Marvin Wolfman of Flushing, NY also has a comics commentary, "What The..." and Kenny Bornstein of Yonkers, NY, publishes "The Challenger Post".  The fanzine's editorial staff includes staff members Eugene Frazier of California; Robert Caluda of New Orleans; Merle Covell of Yankton, SD; Mike Schwartz of Yonkers, NY; and Robert Hamilton of Portland, OR.