most ridculous aspect of weisenger era superman?

[crispy snax]

theres alot of chat about the g oofyness of the silver age superman, and lets be fair, it deserves it, and is the better for it

i was just wondering what do YOU (yes!?!?!? you!!!) think is the goofyest aspect of this period

for me it would have to be the space canine patrol (is that name right?) especially there lil motto "big dog big dog bow wow wow, we crush evil now now now"

[Super Monkey]

and the the Space Cat Patrol Agency!!!

I love them both, but they were extremely silly!

Those issues were selling about 700,000 copies each!

I love all the super pets, but of course I know it's silly! It's a comic book! Comics are suppose to be fun and weird, which in turn makes them more fun. For my money anyway

[JulianPerez]

An easy answer would be something ridiculous and derivative like the Super-Pets or the frequent team-ups with Hercules and Sampson, BUT...

I don't know if it would be any of the above. Stories involving battles with Mr. Mxyzptlk are strange, but they serve the same function as the Holodeck does in STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION: a way of telling very unusual or different kinds of stories.

The most ridiculous aspect about the Weisenger Age wasn't so much a magical imp or that dog. It was a style of storytelling, common in the first decade of Weisenger's tenure, under (ugh) Otto Binder. A storytelling style that had an emphasis on sitcom-esque gimmickry that represented a temporary change or reversal in the status quo that was soon reversed.

All the best Silver Age stories would have to wait for the sixties, and the science fiction grandeur and adventure spirit of the incredible Edmond Hamilton.


Otto Binder (artist's conception)

People talk about the Weisenger Years like they're crazy and unpredictable with new concepts coming out all the time, but what I've read (at least in the beginning), the Weisenger Years were static, still, and set in stone like the Pyramids of Egypt. If any change in the story is introduced, such as Lois learning Superman's secret identity, Otto Binder immediately weasels out of it somehow and we're back to the same-old, same-old.

People get upset when a character is brought back from the dead, as Marvel Girl was in the mid-eighties. Why? Because it's a cheat to reverse something when you think something profound just happened. The "pull the rug out from under" gimmickry of the early period of the Weisenger Years triggers the EXACT SAME aggrivation as learning "Bucky is being brought back from the dead."

This is why I get frustrated with the 1950s, despite Wayne Boring's spectacular art. Superman in the 1990s might have been a neverending mindless action movie, but Superman in the 1950s was a neverending, mindless sitcom.

This is why "Imaginary Stories" were both necessary and inevitable: if nothing ever really changes, if in the end nothing ever really does happen, of course the audience has a strong desire for things that are world-cracking.

It's funny: I bought my SUPERMAN SHOWCASE VOL. 1 (most of which are written by Otto Binder) and my GREEN LANTERN SHOWCASE around the same time, and I've read the GREEN LANTERN showcase to the point its dog-eared and tattered (and I'm thinking about buying another) but my SUPERMAN SHOWCASE VOL. 1 is somewhere up on my shelf, in pristine shape.

[MatterEaterLad]

Well, the early Silver Age was the time of Levittown and "I Remember Mama" on TV.  People wanted sameness and stability along with their Cold War.

[MatterEaterLad]

My favorite cazy aspect about the classic Silver Age is that Superman could be defeating a true menace in one issue and having a completely nuts adventure in in pages of Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen at the same time.

Since I rarely bought Jimmy Olsen and never bought a Lois Lane, its fun to discover the stuff today.

[Super Monkey]

The most ridiculous aspect about the Weisenger Age wasn't so much a magical imp or that dog. It was a style of storytelling, common in the first decade of Weisenger's tenure, under (ugh) Otto Binder.

You mean the same Otto Binder who created Supergirl, Bizarro, The Legion of Super-Heroes, Krypto, Brainiac, Streaky the Supercat, and even Beppo the Supermonkey! The same Otto Binder who brought Captain Marvel to the highest heights of Greatest? Who created Mary Marvel and Black Adam?

"Otto Binder was a kind of titan, a precursor of the gods, because he came up with basic primordial forms that later writers would perhaps polish to a greater luster. But Binder hewed them out of solid rock. He was mining the raw material. Later writers owed him a tremendous debt." - Alan Moore

That guy?

Are you sure?

You tend to get your names wrong a lot.

[MatterEaterLad]

You mean the same Otto Binder who created Supergirl, Bizarro, The Legion of Super-Heroes, Krypto, Brainiac, Streaky the Supercat, and even Beppo the Supermonkey! The same Otto Binder who brought Captain Marvel to the highest heights of Greatest? Who created Mary Marvel and Black Adam?

Not to mention THE PETRIFIED SPACEMAN!

http://superman.nu/wiki/index.php/Petrified_Spaceman

[Johnny Nevada]

>>and the the Space Cat Patrol Agency!!!

I love them both, but they were extremely silly!

Those issues were selling about 700,000 copies each!

I love all the super pets, but of course I know it's silly! It's a comic book! Comics are suppose to be fun and weird, which in turn makes them more fun. For my money anyway Wink
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And the Space Canine Patrol Agents (including their chant), renamed as the "Dog Star Patrol", are appearing daily as part of the "Krypto" cartoon on Cartoon Network, to boot... :-)

One of the most ridiculous aspects I can think of include the Kryptonopolis "smog control" device in the early 60's retelling of Superman's origin story. Similarly, the plan of Superman (in the story where he thinks he's dying of Virus X) to melt the Antarctic ice to make room for future human development. Though these stem from a pre-modern-ecology-movement point of view.... :-)