LUDIC LOG

It's Thursday again, and that means a look at another issue of the 1980s comic book artifact known as Who's Who: The Definitive Directory of the DC Universe. This week we plow through Volume XXIV, or, as I like to call it, the one where it all comes together.

On the surface, there's nothing really remarkable about issue #24; it's got a competent cover by Eduardo Barreto, a letters page no more or less geek-clogged than usual, and an assortment of characters that includes a couple of classics and a whole slew of also-rans. But when you start to thumb through it, you realize that it seems to have an excessive amount of the obsessions that readers of the series have come to recognize as hallmarks of the DC universe: rugged tough guys with smooth-chested young boy companions; unattractive costume design; giant monkeys; tortured continuity; and crappy villains in purple costumes. It's like everything has been building to this, and finally, after all the effort and pain of wading through the prior 23 issues, you finally hit the nerd motherlode. Or, perhaps I'm just going insane from having to think up something to say about lamewads like Tokomak for the last six months. Was it all worth it? Let's see.

TIM TRENCH. This private investigator was DC's attempt at copping a cheap riff off Sam Spade (you use a spade to dig a trench -- get it?); he talked in a cheeseball hardboiled patois that was more bargain-bin Mickey Spillane than second-rate Daishell Hammett, and named his gun 'Lulu', which I guess we were supposed to find charming and eccentric rather than marginally psychotic. His partner was even named 'Archie Miles', for God's sake. Hey, DC, you know why The Maltese Falcon was a classic film? Because Sam Spade didn't fight Dr. Cyber, that's why.

TITANO. Titano the Super-Ape, if you please. Titano was originally named Toto and was "one of the most intelligent chimps on Earth", which led not to his winning the Nobel prize but to becoming first a TV performer and later an astronaut. It was in the commission of the latter trade that he got bombarded with radiation which changed him into a giant ape with Kryptonite vision. He spent the next kabillion years attacking Superman, going back and forth in time, conquering alien planets, and palling around with Lois Lane. Now, needless to say, the stories in which he appeared were almost all completely retarded, but goddamnit, part of the appeal of Superman comics is that they featured completely retarded characters like Titano the Super-Ape. Which is why it's so disheartening to be told, at the back of the book, "Titano is now but a fond memory from the Superman stories of the past". Ha ha! That's right, fans: we know that you remember Titano so fondly that we're just going to let John Byrne wipe him clean out of the mythos as if he never existed! Who cries for the giant radioactive super-apes? Who?

TNT AND DAN THE DYNA-MITE. The first of two extremely pedophiliac duos in this issue of Who's Who, TNT & Dan the Dyna-Mite were once a high school chemistry professor, Tom Thomas, and his star pupil, Dan Dunbar. According to the History section, the two would stay late after school and work on "advanced chemical experiments". Sure. That happens all the time, right? I'm sure that story went over really big with the school board at the misconduct hearing. Anyway, some of the "chemicals" they were "working" with seeped into their bodies and gave them super-powers. And how did they find this out? Well, "one evening while Thomas and Dunbar were working on an experiment, Thomas' hand accidentally touched Dunbar's, and both teacher and student suddenly found themselves feeling much stronger". You can't make this up, folks. Go over that quote again, and then tell me I'm reading too much man-boy love into these characters. 20 years later, we call this sort of thing 'slash'.

TOBIAS WHALE. Tony Isabella likes to brag on how he created Black Lightning, the first African-American DC character to have his own title. You don't hear him doing as much boasting at having created BL's arch-enemyTobias Whale, who is the most flagrant rip-off of the Kingpin imaginable. A big fat strongman with a bald pate, a pinkie ring, and a diamond-studded cravat, and who just happens to run all the organized crime in his city, Tobias is as blatant a bite of Wilson Fisk as you can get without calling him 'Linchpin' or something. W hich, I guess, would be preferable to 'Tobias Whale'. The guy even wears striped purple pants, for Christ's sake.

TOMAHAWK AND DAN HUNTER. Number two in issue #24's hit parade of allegedly heroic old perverts who keep a full-time catamite named Dan. There's nothing particularly pedoerotic about this Revolutionary War hero and his ward, with one tiny exception: the art for the entry features Tomahawk standing directly behind Dan Hunter, his crotch positioned just above the boy's buckskinned buttocks, his hand grasping Dan by his shoulder. Eeeeew. Well-illustrated, there, Dan Spiegle.

TOMAHAWK'S RANGERS. A rabblement of colonial pinheads who hung out with Tomahawk when he wasn't anally violating Dan Hunter, there's nothing that interesting about these dudes (although they have some pretty stupid names like Kaintuck Jones, Brass Buttons and, for the French guy, Frenchie). However, there's a guy named Healer Randolph who is identified in the text as being a black African, but is clearly drawn in the entry -- twice -- as being a blond white man. What's up with that, Dan Spiegle?

TOMMY TOMORROW. That's Tommy Tomorrow of the Planeteers, not just some sack of shit Tommy Tomorrow who works down at the Circle K. This is the guy who would have been Kamandi if DC hadn't used Crisis on Infinite Earths to dump that interesting if bewildering Kirby creation and replace him with this yawn-inducing one which probably issued from the pen of Gardner Fox or Julie Schwartz. Tommy traveled around the universe wearing a really tight see-through top and purple culottes, along with his, ahem, "companion", an identically-dressed fellow named Brent Wood who had a very neatly trimmed mustache. In between missions, they supplemented their meager Planeteer salaries by posing for Intergalactic Blue Boy.

THE TOP. Another member of the Flash's Rogues Gallery, with the ugly costume (green and yellow horizonal-striped bodysuit) and bad Carmine Infantino art that this entails. The Top had no superhuman powers; he could spin really fast, but not faster than, say, Dorothy Hammill. Curiously, it is claimed that "his spinning somehow boosted his intelligence". Try spinning around in a tight circle as fast as you can. You will feel a lot of things: nauseous; dizzy; ridiculous. "Smarter", though, will not be one of them. In fact, you're very likely to feel much, much dumber. Which is exactly how you feel after reading a comic book with the Top in it.

MATT SAVAGE, TRAIL BOSS. Why is Matt Savage not under 'S'? Or 'M'? Why is he under 'T'? If he's under 'T' for 'Trail Boss', why isn't Merry, Girl of a Thousand Gimmicks under 'G'? I mean, hell, why not put him under 'B' for 'Boss'? Even a dentist's office can afford people who know how to file, DC.

THE TRIGGER TWINS. Contemporaries of Matt Savage, Trail Boss, and likewise drawn by Carmine Infantino. These two were identical twins, one the sheriff of a small city and the other a shopkeeper. The sheriff was apparently too lazy or wimpy to do the job himself, so when he got overwhelmed or drunk or whatever, his brother helped him out, with the whole town convinced it was the efforts of one guy. Which you have to admit is a pretty good way to take half your career off. Carmine inexplicably drew two separate drawings for this one instead of just photostatting the same drawing twice. According to the bio, the shopkeeper's girlfriend rode his ass because "he was not as brave and daring as (sheriff) Walt", which "brought a small smile to the brothers' lips". Why do I get the feeling she eventually wound up chained to a chair in a damp basement and the last thing she ever saw was that small smile on their lips?

TURTLE MAN. There were actually two Turtle Men, though you'd be hard pressed to tell them apart. They were both fat and bald and slow and stupid and had idiotic costumes and dumb gimmicks like an "invisible brake shield" and a "slow laser", and as all exceptionally dumb villains eventually did, they fought the Flash. But, astonishingly, they are not drawn by Carmine Infantino. Instead, DC decided to get all cute and have them drawn by Peter Laird, co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Ha, ha, ha.

TWEEDLEDEE & TWEEDLEDUM. Speaking of villains who were fat and bald and slow and stupid, these dolts just go to show you that it's all about context. Had they fought the Flash, they would certainly have been invincibly lame; but instead they fought Batman, whose writers actually managed to make them seem menacing and just crazy enough to be scary. And instead of being drawn by Carmine Infantino, they are drawn here by Bill Sienkiewicz, whose depiction of T & T as the police chief and mayor of Gotham nicely invokes some sort of sinister, demonic analogue of Mayor Quimby and Chief Wiggum.

TWO-FACE. Astute DC nerds will notice that I've left a lot of important characters out of this recap, including T.O. Morrow, Toy-Man, the Trickster and Trigon the Terrible. That's because I like all these characters. And since the purpose of these recaps is to mock and deride really lame comic book characters, I decided to just give them a pass. Two-Face, for example: a classic Batman villain with a fascinating origin and a truly tragic element to his character, superbly illustrated here by Brian Bolland, and with a generally well-written biography. So what's to make fun of? Well, I guess there's always his orange and purple checked half-suit, a get-up so outlandish that it became a major plot point at the end of Keith Giffen's subversive Ambush Bug series. Where the hell does he get those things tailored?

THE 2000 COMMITTEE. A supervillainous combine that was dedicated to taking over the U.S. Government by the year 2000. I wonder if they're still around? If so, having failed, have they revised their name to the 2010 Committee? Or have all their followers deserted them, like the Millerites after the Great Disappointment? Or maybe...they did win. After all, look who's president. (This concludes the 'subtle political satire' portion of our program.)

ULTRAA. Since this faux-Superman's origin involves Earth Prime, it's simply too complicated to go into. Suffice to say, he was the sole superhero on a world without superheroes. At some point, the Justice League came to his homeworld to help defeat the world's only supervillain, and, deciding that this world was better off not having any superhumans -- a wise decision, if you ask me -- they had Green Lantern erase all memory of them from the minds of every person on the planet. Of course they didn't ask permission! They're the good guys! Then Ultraa comes to Earth-1, and decides, well, hell, let's get rid of all the superhumans here, too. All of the sudden, the JLA, who only a short time before had mind-raped 5 billion people on the strength of a moral whim, decide that when it's their own fat in the fire, Ultraa can't be trusted, so they beat the shit out of him and stuff him in a box where he rots in suspended animation. Finally, he gets sprung by "a lawyer who was, in fact, a group of alien beings in disguise", who were engaging in a plot to steal all the hydrogen on Earth, which seems like a bit of a waste of time seeing as hydrogen is the most plentiful element in the entire universe. I sincerely believe that it's comic stories like this one that turned me into the moral monster I am today.

THE ULTRA-HUMANITE. I always loved this villain. First off, he had one of the most deranged names ever -- what the fuck is a "humanite"? Let alone an "ultra-humanite"? Second, he started out as a Lex Luthor clone, only crippled; the next time he showed up, he had his brain transplanted for no discernable reason into the body of a Hollywood movie actress; then, later on, he became a giant flying ant; and then, finally, he shows up, with no explanation whatsoever, in the body of a huge mutated albino gorilla. It is a testament to the grip that comic books have on some people (myself included) that they will just accept this sort of thing with a minimum of questioning. "Oh, it's the Ultra-Humanite! He's gone from being a 20-foot airborne insect to being a 7-foot super-strong mutant albino ape. Okay, sure! Where's Superman?" People like this get to vote, you know.

GARY CONCORD, THE ULTRA-MAN. This is another character who got retconned right out of existence by the Crisis, but it's probably just as well. He was some numb-nuts in the far future (who was costumed in a truly dopey helmet and a pair of tight green shorts a la Tommy Tomorrow -- are short pants the official garb of the 22nd century?), and he had the brilliant idea that he could end war by becoming the world's greatest military strategist and building "defenses so strong war would be impossible". Shockingly, journalists, clergymen and politicians, who unlike Gary were aware of things like the Great Wall of China and the Maginot Line, called him a deluded warmonger. There's more to the story of this deluded warmonger, but it's far too boring to go into, especially when the next entry is...

ULTRA THE MULTI-ALIEN. Ultra purported to be a futuristic super-hero who first appeared in Mystery in Space and who, judging from his secret identity as space pilot 'Ace Arn', should have been created by Steve Ditko, although he was in fact the creation of Dial H for Hero goofball Dave Wood. What he really was was an attempt by DC to create a character even more hideous-looking than Metamorpho. What had happened, see, is that Ace crashed on an alien planet and woke up in the headquarters of a dead alien named Zobra. Why? Who knows. Zobra had invented this gadget that would turn someone into an exact duplicate of whoever used the gadget on them. Why did he do this? Who knows. His four lieutenants, who were each of a different alien species, all decided to shoot Arn Ace with the gadget at the exact same time. Why would they want to do it once, let alone all at the same moment? What possible purpose would it serve? Who knows. If DC knows, they ain't tellin'. Anyway, the end result of this was to turn Arn into a wierd amalgam of all four aliens, resulting in what may be the most fucked-up character design of all time. Ultra combined his truly asinine origin with a body split into four quarters: a green hairy upper right half with spiky white hair, a pale blue hairless upper left half with pointy ears, a feathered chicken-leg lower right half, and a crackling yellow blob of electricity for a lower left half; all of this was shrouded in a pair of white muscleman swim trunks. And to top it all off, he was called "Ultra, the Multi-Alien". Take my word for it: the comic was as stupid as the character design was hideous. They don't come much dumber than Ultra, the Multi-Alien.