The Further Adventures of the DC Universe Quiz

Answer: The Nightmaster

With the introduction, (and major success,) of Marvel's "Conan The Barbarian" in 1969, DC, of course, had to come out with its own countervolley. "The Nightmaster" was the story of a denizen of the 20th century named Jim Rook, who was drawn into a dreamworld, Myrra, populated by a cast of characters resembling those from "Lord of the Rings". He wore a blue, hooded costume with a red cape and wielded the "Nightsword" to fight the evil King Zolto and his Warlock allies.

Jim and his girlfriend Janet entered this world by innocently walking into an occult book store called "Oblivion", which transported him to a land that was once the home of one of his ancestors. "Nightmaster" didn't prove to be that successful with readers and never found his own magazine, though we did get occasional updates.

Answer: Carol Ferris/Star Sapphire

Carol Ferris was the heiress of the Ferris Aircraft Corp., where Hal Jordan/Green Lantern worked as a test pilot for most of his early silver age career. However, shortly after the premier of the title as a silver age entity, Carol was approached by the warrior women of the planet Zamaron to take on the persona of Star Sapphire, the queen of their Amazonian race. She initially refused, but these warrior ladies left behind the Star Sapphire jewel that harbored the persona of the legendary queen, and it eventually overpowered her, turning her into a ruthless, fierce nemesis for the very person she professed to love, Green Lantern. After continued exposure to the influence of the jewel, Carol eventually had a nervous breakdown and became somewhat schizophrenic. She should have stuck to airplanes.

Carol Danvers isn't even a DC character, but the perennial "we need a female character" character at Marvel. Her alter egos have been: Ms. Marvel, Binary and Wardbird. Shierra Hall is actually a hero, being the wife of Hawkman/Carter Hall, and initially joined him as an alien student of Earth police methods, who also worked to fight crime in the Thanagarian police uniforms that made them look like large hawks, wings and all. They used, for some odd reason, medieval Earth weapons like maces and bolos in their adventures.

Duela Dent was actually a short-lived member of the Teen Titans as "The Joker's Daughter", even though she was actually Two Face's.

Answer: Mike Kaluta

"KALUTA!" was the ear-splitting claxon heard from the community sirens in this story about mind control and conditioned reflexes. Mike Kaluta was one of the many talented new artists that were happening on the scene at DC in the early 70s. Along with Neal Adams, Berni Wrightson, Barry Windsor-Smith, (whose work was mainly with Marvel,) Jim Starlin and others, Mike set the standard for the next 35 years of improvements to the comic book medium. After this first wave of artists, there was another phalanx in the latter part of the decade that was just as good! These people included: John Byrne, James Sherman, Marshall Rodgers, Mike Golden and George Perez. Kaluta did graphic work for DC, most notably on the early 70s "The Shadow" publications, and worked as the artist for the movie of the same name starring Alec Baldwin. He has also formed a graphic arts company with Barry Smith, Berni Wrightson and Jeff Jones, whose excellent work could be seen occasionally in the National Lampoon.

The influence of this entire group will probably be felt in the graphic storytelling field until final entrophy.

Answer: Charlton

Charlton, though woefully low on production values, (their lettering was often just typewritten text transferred to the comics page,) the company actually discovered at least three of the giants of the medium! Neal Adams, before he started doing work for DC, drew "Hot Wheels" for Charlton. John Byrne did work for them too. Steve Ditko, on the other hand, practically owned the company at one point, having worked for them before, during and after his work for Marvel. "The Question" was one of his characters there.

He also created a controversial character called "Mr. A", that often turned up in Wally Wood's "Witzend" magazine. "Mr. A" might have scared Pat Buchanan, it was so right wing!

Answer: Mike Sekowsky

Mike Sekowsky, one of DC's more prosaic artists, drew the title from it's inception for 63 issues. He then went on to draw the "Metal Men", a title concerning a group of advanced humanoid robots who embodied the traits of the metals they were made of, and "Wonder Woman" in the late 60s and early 70s. Under his tenure, the "Metal Men", actually a charming title aimed at teaching kids about metallurgy, died a painful death.

He also revamped "Wonder Woman" to the point where she was almost unrecognizable, giving her an oriental sidekick named "I Ching". That title almost died as well! Sekowsky was born in 1923 and died in 1989.

Answer: Katma Tui

Katma Tui was the Green Lantern of Korugan, a planet in the sector designated 1417 by the Oan "Guardians of the Universe". She briefly had a romantic connection to John Stewart, Hal Jordan's backup and eventual replacement after Jordan resigned as GL of Earth.

She initially rebelled against Sinestro, the renegade Green Lantern, who used his power ring to subjugate his own planet. She testified against him at his trial, leading to his imprisonment on the anti-matter world, Qward. She replaced Sinestro as Green Lantern of the sector and is considered one of the finest examples of the Corp.

Answer: Beppo, Streaky and Comet

Beppo was a super-monkey, Streaky was the super-cat and Comet was a super-horse, originally a centaur named Byron who had been bewitched by Circe, of "Odyssey" fame. This dubious menagerie took away a lot of credibility from this character, meant as a companion of similar history and familial connection to the Man of Steel.

They were eventually forgotten, and Supergirl herself was actually killed off for a while back in the mid-80s.

Answer: Nastalthia Luthor

Nastalthia Luthor was Lex's niece and worked for the same TV station that Linda worked for after she graduated from Stanhope. She had the same Machiavellian instincts as her uncle and reminds me of at least one person I have worked with in my own adult life! Her nickname was "Nasty", and she and Linda were rivals for one of the cameraman's affections at the station. Nasty constantly tried to sabotage Linda's work at the studio.

Chili Seven was "Millie the Model's" rival at Marvel. "Gigi Cusamano" was a science policewoman assigned to the Legion of Superheroes and Imra Ardeen was Saturn Girl's real name from the Legion.

Answer: The "Time Pool"

Ray Palmer ("The Atom") would climb down a line with a magnet at the end into a dimension rift that sent him back in time to investigate an issue popping up in his own magazine, which ran for a few years in the early 60s.

"The Atom" was an interesting concept light-years removed from his golden-aged counterpart, who was essentially a short guy with a powerful "atomic" punch. The silver age Atom could shrink down to subatomic size, ride telephone pulses to get from point A to point B almost instantly, and could conceivably do something like cure an epidemic by injecting antibiotics or pathogen killers at the site!

Time travel was a big plot device at DC in the early 60s, and the "Time Pool" was yet another imaginative handling of it in "The Atom", dreamed up by John Broome and drawn by Gil Kane for most of its run.

Answer: Dunbar Dodo and Fennimore Frog

"The Dodo and the Frog" were one pair of a slew of "funny animal" characters that DC published in the 50s and early 60s. Others were "The Fox and the Crow", "Doodles Duck" and "The Mouse Musketeers". "The Mouse Musketeers" were Fatsy, Patsy and Minus and I forget what the names of the Fox and the Crow were, but some of the writing for these characters was a lot more intelligent than you'd think it would be.

Answer: Jerry Lewis and Bob Hope

Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis, who were doing well as contract playing stars at Paramount Pictures in the 50s, had comic books dedicated to them for most of that decade and on into the early 70s, drawn by either Sheldon Mayer, Bob Oskner, Owen Fitzgerald or, wonder of wonders... Neal Adams!

Neal Adams did work on the final issue of Bob Hope's magazine, a magazine that portrayed him as pretty much the same type of character the public loved in the 40s movies, that of a cowardly, gag-spewing con artist. He was constantly dreaming up get-rich-quick schemes and inventions to pay his rent, which was always in arrears. Constant references were made to Bing Crosby, his old confrère from the "Road" movies.

Jerry Lewis' magazine started out as a Martin and Lewis vehicle, but we all know what happened to them, right? After the famous split of 1956, Jerry alone starred in the magazine and his stories were generally penned by Arnold Drake and drawn by Bob Oskner, who, along with Mort Drucker, Murray Boltinoff and Sheldon Mayer, was one of DC's premier humor artists. It stopped publication in 1971. Both of these comic icons had their magazines run from the very early 50s.

Answer: Matter-Eater Lad

Yep. For something like ten years, Matter-Eater Lad was totally insane. The cause of this insanity, which Brainiac V finally cured after an extended period, was his devouring of "the Miracle Machine", a device which threatened to destroy the Universe.

His home planet is "Bismoll", an obvious play on the venerable indigestion remedy 'Pepto' Bismol! He is now a senator on that world and he has left the Legion of Superheroes.

Answer: R.J. Brande

In an extended storyline in the 70s, it was revealed that R.J. Brande, the Legion's sponsor and a man who actually constructs artificial suns for his customers, was Reep Daggle's father from Durla, a planet of shape shifters. Brande's real name was Ren Daggle.

He had been frozen in the Terran form due to a disease and suffered from selective amnesia about his origins. Durla had had a very turbulent history, not unlike that of Vulcan and Romulus in "Star Trek".

Answer: Issue #76 of Green Lantern

This trend setting and iconoclastic title, drawn by Neal Adams and penned by Denny O'Neill, set the tone for comics from day one. Stodgy, monolithic DC, which until that time had stuck to white-bread superheroes who only had clean, non-ethnic, politically bland adventures, decided to "out-Marvel" Marvel by taking on the issues of the day in this exceptional book. The very first issue dealt with race and poverty, as a poor, elderly black man confronts Green Lantern about his space heroics vis-a-vis the suffering and poverty on Earth. Green Arrow, aka Oliver Queen, who had, until that time, been a clone of Batman, was transformed into a Howard Keel-type personage, with a grinning visage and prominent beard that gave him a medieval, hale and hearty look. He pretty much acted as GL's "guide" or "conscience" for the initial run of this transmorgrified title. He also had a distinct left of center political bent. To this day, he is my favorite DC superhero, and easily their most improved outside of his former m.o. doppelganger, Batman.

This pairing enjoyed a 10 issue run, minus a reprint issue, after which GL/GA was woefully canceled. The feature appeared for a while in the back of "The Flash's" magazine, and was revived, albeit without as much of a social conscious, in the mid-70s. This pairing was one of the landmarks of comicdom of the past 40 years, and was quite daring, considering the medium and the company behind it. The third issue of the GL/GA run even featured a story with a character obviously lampooning the ultra-conservative then-vice president of Richard Nixon's, Spiro Agnew, using a character named "Grandy". Nixon himself was parodied in the little girl the villainous "Grandy" controlled. Hairy!

Answer: He was an alien worm

Mr. Mind was a two-inch worm that menaced the Marvel family in their magazines since the early 40s. He usually worked with a large team, "The Monster Society of Evil". This, at one time, included the entire Axis of WWII! Mind came from a race of alien worms that had intelligence beyond that of humans, and though brilliant, he was constantly foiled by the Marvels. He also often teamed with Capt. Marvel's usual arch-nemesis, Dr. Thaddeus Bodog Sivana, a wisecracking runt with craggy features, a devious, clever mind and a wicked sense of humor. Sivana always referred to Capt. Marvel as "The Big Red Cheese".

Mind is now, in the latest DC iteration of the Marvel characters, a larger, more menacing character whose origin is from Venus. In his Fawcett and earlier DC versions, he was a cartoonish, bespectacled creature that was so small, he needed an amplifier that hung around his neck so he could be heard.

The Marvel Family was perhaps the most uniquely portrayed team of characters ever presented in comics, for they married the world of funny animals with that of superheroes and had a winning formula from the start. At one time, Capt. Marvel and his cohorts (The Lt. Marvels, Capt. Marvel Jr., Mary Marvel, Uncle Marvel and Hoppy the Marvel Bunny,) were so popular that one of the titles sold 14,000,000 copies of one issue, and one title was even published 'weekly'!