April Madness, 1st Semifinal--SHOCKER!!

It's time for the first semifinal of The Seven Justice Soldiers Of The Victory League Society!!

Can...

...defeat...

It should be trickier for team Superman this time around, as they have to face a true major league magic user!

And indeed, that's how it starts off, as Kal-El takes one of Dr. Fate's bolts of eldritch energy right to the face, and goes down!! Big trouble for the #1 seed!!

Ralph Dibny's nose starts smelling a mystery, which means he's helpless when he gets a snoutful of sleep gas from Sandman!!

Metamorpho turns into a super-dense mesh, temporarily trapping the Atom. So this battle may come down to Dr. Fate vs. Sandman!

But wait!! Sandman unleashes a punch so powerful, he actually dents Fate's helmet!! What the?!?! Team Superman wins--but how?!?

LOOK!! Sandman is taking off his gas mask--and he's really Superman!! INCREDIBLE!! It was the classic Silver Age tactic of switching identities before the fight, so Wesley Dodds would take the brunt of Doctor Fate's attack, leaving Superman free to take the sorcerer by surprise!!

What a classic!! Tune in later this morning for the second semifinal!!

April Madness Round II--A Mild Upset!

Welcome to Round 2 of The Seven Justice Soldiers of The Victory League Society, our meaningless exercise is random fighting!!

This bout features...

(That's Earth-2 Wonder Woman...)

vs.

(That's Earth-1 Atom, just to be clear).

This would be a pretty tight bout, as you'd expect from the 4th and 5th seeds. And in a bit of a surprise, I see Dr. Fate's group eking out a victory.

Dr. Fate could likely nullify Diana's mystic strength, at least temporarily, allowing Atom to use her lasso to bind Dr. Mid-Nite as he shrinks small enough to slip between the particles of darkness of his blackout bomb (Hey, I can use DC Science, too!!). Meanwhile, Hawkman's ancient weaponry wouldn't do too much against a body that can wrap around any impact. By that point he'd be the last man standing, and no way could he stand against all three of them.

So our winner is...

Think I'm wrong? Get your own blog!!

Dr. Fate's team will face Superman's later this week. Tune in tomorrow four our other first round bouts!!

Yet Another Memo To The Punisher...

Folks, lets us meet the greatest Western hero of all:

Yes, Ham Gravy!!

And by the way, if you want to know the real reason that DC won't bring back Ralph Dibny...

...it's to avoid the massive lawsuit for stealing Ham's shtick.

Anyway, Ham's crime-sensing nose leads him to a nearly empty town ,with a note taped to the sheriff's door:

Well, Ham qualifies, and takes the job to put down the awful Boom Brothers.Which he does thusly:

BAM!!

SHAZAM!!

You said it, Ham!!

So listen up, Frank Castle, David Goyer-written Kal-El, and all you other "anti-heroes" with your "I must kill the bad guys" coolness: If a man knows how to use a gun, there's no need to shoot anyone.

Thus endeth the lesson.

From Popeye #15 (1951), as reprinted in Classic Popeye #15 (2013)

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)

Delusions Of Grandeur

In Justice League Of America #134 (1976), we find out that Ralph Dibny has a rather inflated opinion of his fighting prowess:

Now, granted, this is pre-Flames-of-Py'tar Despero, who was more of a mind-power and manipulator baddy...but he's still Despero, who at this point had taken on the entire Justice League--solo--a number of times.

In fact, in this very issue, Elongated Man has seen Despero take punches from Wonder Woman and Supergirl without going down. And yet...

I'm trying not to laugh at the dead guy here. But come on, Ralph...did you really expect your "best punch" to succeed when Diana's and Kara's weren't sufficient? That's cute, but you're not in the JLA for your punching power.

[Aside: if he's still dead. Like most of the revived JLAers in Blackest Night, Geoff Johns has completely forgotten about him, which is pretty amazing because while the turgidly paced 8-issue series has only enough story for 4 issues, Johns has tossed away the only interesting part of the whole premise in order to pad things out with stupid ring games. Oh, well...]

By the way, am I the only one out there who seriously prefers chess-playing, brain-manipulating Despero...

...to the "Hulk Smash" steroid-abusing Despero, who can stand up to simultaneous punches from Superman and Captain Marvel?

Maybe it's just me, but I liked him more as a unique, wonky, could-only-have-come-out-of-DC's-Silver-Age villain...

...than as the dime-a-dozen retrofitted-because-super-strong-characters-are-easier-to-write-than-mind-characters 1980s onward version:

Ahh, it probably is just me...