Anyone read FIRST Cave Carson tale?

[Gothos]

As I have been unable to lay hands on a copy, I've a question about the feature story:

Does the first tale introduce the notion that Cave and one of his partners (I think his name is Biff or something like that) are continually fighting for the affections of the girl partner? I know it's in one of the later stories...

[MWGallaher]

I think maybe you're confusing Cave and his crew with the Sea Devils (which I believe did have a "Biff").
In Cave's final two installments (Showcase 48 & 49) a rival for his affections with Christie, Johnny Blake, was introduced. The gang searched for Blake in #48, and found him in #49. Blake was never mentioned in Cave's first five appearances in Brave and Bold, and the third member of the team, Bulldozer, never shows any sign of pining for Christie in any of the seven installments.

[Gothos]

Thanks very much, MW. I wasn't sure whether or not there had been any reference to Johnny Blake in earlier adventures, so that clears that up. I think I have seen both of his appearances, then.

It's interesting that the motif also shows up in FF #1, where it's suggested that Ben carries a little torch for Sue, though the idea's largely dropped after that. But I haven't sat down and compared publication dates for the respective stories as yet.

[Mike Kuypers]

I think the "three guys and a gal" scenario was pretty much of a cliché by then, thanks to science fiction movies like Rocketship X-M that came before. In these movies two of the three guys were rivals for the woman's affections. (The third was usually an older father-figure type.) You can see this in many team books from the early '60s.

[MWGallaher]

"Three guys and a gal" was indeed a cliche. When Cave debuted in 1960, though, it was just "two guys and a gal", and things were pretty dry. Those last two installments in--was it 1964?--brought in the additional personality conflict of Christie's long-lost previous love, Johnny Blake, which was probably in response to DC's observation of Marvel's mileage from soap opera conflict. It's really a startling and obvious change in tone when you read them back-to-back. Who wrote those last two Caves? Excuse me, lemme check...France Herron on the first three, Bob Haney on the final four. That helps explain things; Haney and Drake were the DC writers most receptive to Stan Lee's early-60's innovations.