Saturday Solutions - Epic Fail Edition

The bestest thing about yesterday's Trekki quiz was the artwork on the banner, so let's run that again!

Here are the "Official Answers" that ran with the quiz in Marvel's Pizzazz magazine -

Ummm - yeeee-ah...
Let's take it by the numbers, shall we?

1. Mr. Spock plays the Vulcan Lute, which does look like a small harp. And it is sometimes called a Vulcan Lyre or a Vulcan Harp. We'll give it a half point for correctness. (minus a half point since he can also wiggle his ears)
2. - 4. Answers lie within acceptable parameters, and remind us that we are reading a Marvel magazine.
5. Arell Blanton's Lt. Dickerson was the "Chief Security Guard" for one episode - The Savage Curtain - and never seen again. All ranking personnel wearing red who weren't a part of the Engineering staff would be classified as "Security officer aboard the Enterprise."
6. I would have said "Trouble" which doesn't make their answer incorrect.
7...   8...
9! Well, apparently there was an un-aired scene where Bruce Hyde got carried away as Kevin Riley when he usurped Kirk's captaincy. It seems he must have swiped Montgomery Scott's nickname, too.
Obviously, it didn't stick. As i recall, they called him "Kathleen" in the mess hall for quite a while. (Kevin, not Bruce. Bruce was/is cool.)
10. Yup.
11. Okay... Maybe this guy actually does know his Trek and he's just playing with us?
See, Zarabeth was a woman played by the lovely Mariette Hartley. And the answer "the only meat Spock ever ate" was likely a technically correct answer at that point in his life. We weren't privy to the specifics of their coupling on 1960's TV to fully confirm one way or another, but it seems logical given the parameters of the situation.
13. The name of the High Priestess of Yonada was Natira, not Matiza. And Yonada was an asteroid ship, not a world.
14. The Horta was the creature appearing in the episode Devil In The Dark. The first aired episode was The Man Trap, featuring a shape shifting salt vampire named Nancy.
15. Well, at least they knew the Horta was just protecting her eggs.
17. The Hyena, of course, was Leena.
18. "Medical Check-Up"  Is that the new euphemism for an uncontrolled mating rut? Y'know - like Shatner's title for that episode... "What Makes Salmon Run?"
21. Jeffrey Hunter played Captain Chrisopher Pike in the first pilot - the officer who handed over command to Captain Kirk at the beginning of his tour on the Enterprise. William Shatner was, indeed, the only actor play James T. Kirk on film, both live action and animated. (On vinyl record is another matter. And this quiz was last century, before the reboot with the punk kid version of Kirk)
22. "A Villain? Oh! You wound me, Sir! I BLEED that a Noble Rogue such as myself might be branded a villain by a cruel and unjust governance!"
23. There are six pads on the transporter platform and six is the maximum recommended safe transport, but we did see that number exceeded on at least one occasion. (And shouldn't the hanger and storage facilities on board the Enterprise have a cargo transporter? (Your Honor, we call Speculation - Irrelevant to the answer. (Agreed. Move along.)))
24. I would have said "Half Human." That's what they told him when he was growing up.
26. Seriously? A total non-aggression pact forcibly imposed upon both stellar empires and maintained by highly evolved outside parties because Kirk and Kor lose their shit every time they meet, and all they're going to do is mention who signed it? The description could have been   Glorious.

*sigh*

The rest is close enough. I'm too depressed to go on.

But!
We do have a Bonus Saturday Solution!!

An answer to yesterday's Matinee query* as to the nature of Micro-Face. No, i don't mean an answer to why the poor sap was hobbled with the name Micro-Face, and why there was no talking badger or something to harass him for it. I mean, to what did the name refer?
As it turns out, he did not have a shrunken face on a normal sized skull, like Little Face. But he did not have tasers from his face, just like Taser-Face. However, the name Micro-Face is derived from the Micro Mask our hero, Tom Wood, developed.
No, it's not a very small mask. It has "Micro" tools built into it. Like Microscope, Microphone, Micro... ears?

Okay. But still...

Micro-Face?

puzzle from Pizzazz # 5 (1978), Micro-Face from Clue Comics #1 (1943)

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*(My apologies to any who tried the link and hit a dead page earlier. Blogger is now "correcting" the code and such directed links are no longer possible)

3 Day Weekend Matinee - Enter The Giant

For the lead feature on today's matinee, we travel back to 1943. Nearly a quarter century before Daisaku Kusama/Johnny Sokko commanded his Giant Robot, more than half a century before Hogarth Hughes teamed up with his Iron Giant, another young lad had his own giant warrior automaton for his adventures. We've got his 14 page debut strip from the first issue of Clue Comics. (Those first 9 issues were a bit odd.)

Before we get to that, of course, we've got our ongoing serial - Oskar Lebeck & Alden McWilliams' classic Twin Earths.

Previously on Twin Earths: Vana, a defector from Terra - the human inhabited planet in an orbital position opposite Sol from the Earth - has allied herself with the United States government. Having survived assassination attempts by her former planet, romance blossoms between Vana and her FBI liason, Agent Garry Verth while she educates him on the history of her planet. Two centuries prior, a terrible plague devestated their world, and killed off the vast majority of the planet's male population...

Twin Earths - Chapter Seven:

 While Steve Martin (the comedian/singer, not the Raymond Burr character from the US version of the original Godzilla) may champion Tut for the title, there's another contender for Boy King who gets the vote around here. (Sorry, old boy - not just shoes are cruel)

Meet David, the Boy King of Swisslakia. (What? Did you think that inventing countries in comics did not go back to the beginnings of the medium? But, don't fret - we get a map.)
Written by Charles Biro & Bob Wood, with artwork from Alan Mandel and Dan Barry, here's his introductory tale -

Do you think that maybe the Boy King might be a tad on the violent side in dealing with his enemies?
Take a gander at the blurb on the cover of the next issue:

"We Warn You! The BOY KING Will KILL CRIME!"

You might be right.

Meanwhile - Micro-Face?
Is he related to Taser-Face?
Or perhaps to Dick Tracy's Little Face?

Seriously - Micro-Face?

I guess we'll find out tomorrow...

page art from Twin Earths and Clue Comics #1 (1943, 1952)

Friday Fun & Games - 'Trekki' Style

A cautionary note on today's Friday Fun & Games entry:
Some of the proffered answers are consistent with being unable to spell the word 'Trekkie' as it is spelled by Star Trek fans. Be prepared to supply your own answers when necessary, with bonus points given for context solutions to Al's errors -

Puzzle answers (and corrections) available in tomorrow's Saturday Solutions, as well as the puzzle source.

puzzle from ... weren't you reading that line above? 

Why is all this empty white space down here?
Oh... it's not empty. There's words!
In fact, this whiteness is filled with 600 characters.

Why?
Because this is the 600th post!

But, really - is there any point to celebrating that milestone? Certainly not worth offsetting the scheduled Friday Fun & Games post; not in my opinion. More fun to wait a bit for the 666th post to roll around. We'd have fun celebrating that comic book character that Disney bought along with Marvel - Satan!

So, we'll probably visit with his kids then - they both have had their own Marvel comics features.
See you then!

Easing Troubled Minds

No, of course i wasn't going to leave things like that.

The Kryptonoid kept Superman on the defensive through most of the next issue's story, until the penultimate page. In addition to featuring the turning point of the fight leading to our villain's defeat, that page also reveals the answer the question posed in the previous post - How did the Kryptonoid animate the lightpost?

Freaked out at the notion of bonding with his own destruction, he's down for the count in only 3 panels.

My guess of the eye-beams transmitting the microorganisms to enable control was correct, but i didn't think to specify having the beams generated by the X-17 robot.

Now you can sleep easy with the knowledge of how Kal-El prevailed.

page art by Curt Swan & Frank Chiaramonte, words by Martin Pasko, for Superman #329 (1978)

How To Bake A Super-Villain

Villains are often as much the stars of comic books as are the Heroes.
As in most forms of storytelling, the heroes are to a large extent defined by their villains. While easy enough to populate the book with generic thieves and politicians (or whatever sort of villainous type one might prefer to insert), trying to create a memorable villain can be a far more difficult feat.

And when your hero is Superman...  well, the complaints about the difficulty of writing villains for him are nearly as legendary as Kal-El himself these days. And understandably, especially back in the days when he could juggle planets while kissing Lois. Whatcha gonna do?

Well, let's jump back 40 years and see how Marty Pasko handled the problem. This morning we saw Clark using the telephone landline to his Fortress Of Solitude (of which Clarks seem to be so fond). The reason he was calling was to check with the computer on a bit of Kryptonian history. Like nearly all Kryptonian history, it involved his father, Jor-El.

Step One) Begin with a Kryptonian organism.

A friend of Jor-El named Ser-Ze had developed a type of commensal (sort of a non-parasitic symbiote) that could animate synthetic component and react to nerve stimuli...

Once again, however, that dreaded X factor pops up. They hadn't considered that living organisms, by nature, multiply. What happens when they grow past the material they were designed to inhabit?

It didn't go well, and soon they were faced with outright revolution and invasion from within...

In the aftermath, some remaining samples are discovered which, of course, means they're going straight into Jor-El's usual trashcan - outer space...

Decades later on Earth, since Jor-El shot most of his trash in the same direction that he launched his son...

Superman, in space dealing with the bus the Commensals rode in on, notices the Kryptonian origin of the piece that got away...

...and, as we well know, anything from Krypton gets a massive level-up upon entering Earth's biosphere...

The two collide, sending each flying in opposite directions and dropping Superman unconscious into the sea.

Step Two) Add one high-powered military officer with a bitter grudge against our hero.

The general in charge of the mission that was scrapped by Superman's mission in space (for the government), has shown a consistently hostile attitude toward the Man of Steel. Far more than one might think we'd see from just having his command undermined...

Step Three) Add one recovered & reprogrammed Superman robot.

Step Four) Combine Kryptonian Organisms and Superman Robot.

Step Five) Blend in Military Officer (Mix Well)

Step Six) Fold in Surprise Ingredient - an unexpected power.
(I know what my theory was as to how this power worked. Have you got one?)

Step Seven) Combine hatred of Superman with hatred of Jor-El for added spice. (Caution - may get too hot!)

There you have it - ready to serve.
But, we're all out of comic, so i guess we're done here, eh?

page art by Curt Swan and Frank Chiaramonte for Superman #328 (1978)