Manic Monday Triple Overtime--Maybe If He Asked For An Expensive Comission?

From the Ask The Answer Man Column in Superman Family #208 (1981):

Hmmm...

Why, exactly, did you want a writer to come to your house, Kerry Pillion? Have some homework due? Planning on kidnapping him and starting your own comics company?

Is DC still dead set against sending writers to people's homes? I mean, I've got some questions for some of them...

The Answers Man's Wrongest Answer EVER!!

From the Ask The Answer Man column in Adventure Comics #455 (1978):

I love you, Bob Rozakis, but this is so wrong!

Leaving aside all of the economic issues--sure, I know they couldn't continue to produce 100 pages monsters for 50¢ or 60¢--I'm really not sure you can say "contains no reprints" as a positive, and not a negative.

Nothing against new stories, but for a comics fan of the right age, those reprints were a godsend.

Recall, if you will, in that mid-70s era, these old stories were nowhere as nearly accessible as they are today. Comic shops certainly weren't as available to the majority of readers. There were no trade paperback collections or omnibi awaiting us in bookstores. There was no internet or Comixology, no place to legally (or even illegally) download gigabytes worth of old comics.

So for a lot of those older Silver Age stories, and especially the Golden Age tales, these 100 Page Spectaculars were literally the only source a couple of generations of comics fan had to access them, aside from the random garage sale or flea market.

My first exposure to Kid Eternity, and the Silent Knight, and the Star-Spangled Kid, and Superman Red/Superman Blue, and Wildcat, and Johnny Quick, and...well, let's just say that for me, and no doubt a lot of today's creators, our first exposure to a massive chunk of DC history came from the reprints in these humongous comics.

Marvel, of course, had a much shorter history. Yet during this era they had entire books dedicated to reprinting the early Silver Age stories of Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, Thor, Iron Man, Captain America, the Avengers, etc. Meanwhile, aside from the reprints in the 100 Page Spectaculars (and a few other similar projects), DC showed little interest in sharing its past.

So, yeah, yay for Dollar Comics. But boo for no reprints!!

Friday Night Filosophy--But What Does "Dead" Mean, Exactly?

From the Ask The Answer Man Column in Karate Kid #13 (1978):

Bob Rozakis just laid a heavy truth bomb on you, folks...

Manic Memorial Day Bonus--Don't Tease Us, Answer Man!!

From the Ask The Answer Man column in The Unexpected #185 (1978):

OK, Bob Rozakis and Al Milgrom, silly dismissive answer aside...

THERE IS NOW NOTHING IN THE WORLD I WANT MORE THAN A JONAH HEX/MAN-BAT TEAM-UP!!

Rebirth, anyone?

Manic Monday--What Convergence Should Have Been!!

From the Ask The Answer Man column in Weird War Tales #81 (1979):

Great googly moogly, what an awesome idea!

Ted Baxter is...Starman!
Lou Grant is...The Atom!
Mary Richards is...Black Canary!!
Murray Slaughter is...Green Lantern!!!
Rhoda Morganstern is...Wonder Woman!!!!
Phyllis Lindstrom is...Red Tornado!!!!!

OK, I'll stop now.

In The DC Universe, It's Never Mother's Day!

From the Ask The Answer Man column in Weird War Tales #82 (1979):

Yes, of course, because a woman can't have children unless she's married!!

That's why DC has a de facto ban on married heroes--it's a form of birth control!!

Sigh...

All Wishes Come True, Eventually!

From the Answer Man column appearing in Ghosts #86 (1980):

Gold star for that answer!

It only took 33 years, kicking Green Lantern to the curb after a bomb of a movie, and changing Ollie's name to Arrow because CW was embarrassed to be doing a super-hero series. But "Unsigned", you've got your TV show!!

Still, with the success of CW's efforts, how long do you think before we get "Lantern" (gotta drop the green) drops by "Starling City" (sigh) and we get some "hard-traveling heroes" on a, say, 3-part road trip during sweeps week?

Jim Lee Is No Curt Swan

From The Answer Man column in New Adventures Of Superboy #6 (1980):

And then there's Jim Lee. "Only" a page a day would be a quantum improvement in pace for a man who's finished 2 issues of Superman Unchained in 7 months. But I guess he knows the publisher or something, because apparently deadlines are optional for him...

I'm just sayin.'

Oh, If Only The List Were Still This Short...

From the Answer Man column in Batman #299 (1978):

Sigh...

Manic Monday Bonus--The Comic Book I Most Want In 2014!

From the Answer Man column in Superman #348 (1980):

Look, is there anyone in America who wouldn't want this? Especially with how nuts Neal Adams has been as a writer lately?

Seriously--raise your hand if you don't want to see a 12-issue Super Friends: Odyssey mini-series next year.

Just as I thought. We all do.

Make it so, DC and Neal Adams...

Manic Monday Triple Overtime--Birds Of Prey, The Early Pitch

From the Ask The Answer Man column in Green Lantern #118 (1979):

I would totally read the hell out of that comic book...

Answer Manic Monday #2--Get A Job, Ralph!!

One of the mysteries of the pre-nu52 DC Universe:

This is a surprisingly good question.

Sue was independently wealthy...She was a wealthy socialite and heiress.

But Ralph? He was just some middle class kid who grew up in Nebraska and became fascinated with carny contortionists. So how was he independently wealthy?

The common Silver and Bronze Age answer was that he made a "fortune" with television appearances. Possible, I suppose--but who really got rich just off of appearing on Ed Sullivan? That was just a platform to improve your visibility so you could make the real bucks touring, and making records, etc. No one else retired and funded a luxurious life of mystery solving from a few Johnny Carson gigs.

Of course, Ralph could have made a mint endorsing Gingold...until the inevitable lawsuits because most people were allergic to Gingold (this is a true DC fact).

Also, Ralph was chemist enough (or lucky idiot enough) to develop a "super-concentrated extract" of the gingo fruit. But he apparently didn't sell it to anyone, nor is there much evidence that he performed much else in the way of advanced chemistry during his career.

Maybe he just lived off his wife's money, and the JLA stipend, and hosting the occasional reality show (because face it, Ralph was born to host some crappy "find the ghost" type crappy "mystery" show on SyFy).

So, if/when DC gets off their butt and decides to reintroduce Ralph Dibny to the nu52, job one is to find him a...well, job.

From the Answer Man column in Adventure Comics #455 (1978)

Answer Manic Monday #1--All Too Easy

I have nothing but respect for the work that Bob Rozakis did as DC's Answer Man.

In the days before the internet--hell, before computers, really--it couldn't have been easy to come up with all the answers to oddball questions that fans threw at you.

Sometimes, though...

...sometimes, it was pretty easy.

From the Answer Man column in Adventure Comics #474 (1980)

Manic Monday--Too Soon?

From the Ask The Answer Man column in The Witching Hour #75 (1977):

Oh, I'll take this one for you, Bob Rozakis:

No, Robin will never get out of college to team up with Batman again, because he'll never get out of college, because he'll never get to college, becasue he's DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD DEAD---

 What? That's not the right answer?

Oh, sorry, wrong Robin. How silly of me...

By the way, on the subject of killing children in comics...I'll tell you, that never would have happened back in the comics I read as a youth. I mean, really, Stan and Jack would have never done something like tha--

Oh.

Never mind again.

Last panel from Avengers #4 (1964)

Bummer

From the Ask The Answer Man column in The New Adventures Of Superboy #5 (1980):

Man, what did those Earth-2 cats do for fun?

Of course, we have no Bizarro at all now, so we're all in the same boat. (No, I don't count H'el, because even if he was meant to be the nu52 Bizarro, as some have claimed, he's so far from Bizarro that he might as well be the nu52 Anti-Monitor...)

Of course, if James Robinson is reading, he probably has more leeway on the modern Earth-2. And if the people on that devastated planet had tried to recreate (or revive) Superman and something had gone amiss...

I'm just sayin'...

Ask The Storage Man!!

From the Ask The Answer Man! column in Adventure Comics #471 (1980):

Piles? Piles!?! C'mon, Bob Rozakis, no long boxes?!?

Plus, if you have 10,000 comics these days, you might not be able to afford a house....

Ask The Answer Manic Monday #11--Risk Not The Wrath Of The Answer Man!!

You know, it must have been a tough gig to be The Answer Man. You get all of these silly questions you have to answer every week; you get many of those damn questions over and over (and over) again; you're limited by the Twitter-like restrictions of your column's size, so there's no hope of full explanation or discourse; and every week you had to deal with 2,459 "how much is this comic worth" questions.

So it's not surprising that once in awhile, even though he was choosing the questions himself, Bob Rozakis had to vent a bit, let his inner snark out, and give a smart-ass--and occasionally mean-spirited--answer.

Case in point: Flash #284 (1980):

Ah, c'mon, bro, that's not too stupid a question. Give poor Remigio Gomez a straight answer!!

Or, try Secrets Of The Haunted House #25 (1980):

Ooooh, stick the knife in! Since that's probably a kid writing, tearing him up like that seems a bit nasty, no? At least you withheld his name...

So remember--you may ask The Answer Man...but you may not like the answer you get!!

Ask The Answer manic Monday #10--Marvel/Dc Crossover!!

From the Ask The Answer Man column in Action Comics #497 (1979):

Because you're one helluva nice guy, Bob Rozakis. Because you're one helluva nice guy.

Ask The Answer Manic Monday #9--How Big Is Batman?

OK, this might seem like a trivial question from "Taco-Clark (??)," but as per usual, it's made me think too hard:

The Answer Man sort of blows this one off (in Secrets Of The Haunted House #22 (1980)), so I put my mind to it.

Sure, Batman has pushed himself to the peak of his body's potential for physical fitness. But that wouldn't necessarily make him taller.

Whereas Captain America, he's been altered by the Super-Soldier Serum and Vita-Rays. Clearly Steve Rogers is taller than he was. Doc Erskine's work didn't just push him to his body's peak, it pushed him, more or less, to the (non-super-powered) human peak.

So, easy answer...Cap used steroids, so he's taller.

But wait. This is Batman we're talking about. Bruce Wayne is the most obsessed guy on Earth--why in the world wouldn't he use steroids to help pump himself up, if that made him better in his fight against crime??

I mean, if you're Batman, and somebody was killed because you hadn't done everything humanly possible to make yourself the ultimate anti-crime weapon, you've failed, right? At least from his viewpoint. He's all about the mission. And can we believe that a man who would sacrifice any vestige of a personal life, who goes days without food or sleep, who refuses to get proper medical care when there's something going on in Gotham...are we to believe that this man wouldn't ask Leslie Thompkins to shoot him up with some anabolic steroids? He's not worried about being a role model for kids or going to the Hall Of Fame--he's got a mission, he's driven, and he sees any failure as a betrayal of his parents. So again...how could he not juice up?

Chime in, peeps.

Oh, yeah, and discuss whether Cap is taller than Batman, if you're still worried about that...

Ask The Answer manic Monday #8--Battle Of The Century

Peanut Gallery, I need your help with this poser from the Answer Man column in House Of Mystery #277 (1980):

Wow, Bob Rozakis is pretty quick with that answer, huh? No explanation, no reasoning, just a terse "GL."

I mean, sure, Hal's a test pilot, and in some continuities he's ex-military, so maybe there's some basis for assuming he's buff without the ring. And Barry's just some lab rat, a scientist, and we know they're all wusses, right?

Ehhh...I don't know. Particularly in the nu52, Hal's been portrayed as pretty dim and arrogant, and pretty worthless without the ring.

And Barry? He's smart, man. And don't forget his killer instinct (right, Zoom?) I don't think the fight is as clear cut as The Answer Man seems to think.

Chime in, peeps.