Did Gardner Fox Think his Readers Were Morons?

[Typo Lad]

I put this on the JLA board, but you guys are more "old-timey," so you may have a better answer for me:

I know that in 1967, most readers of JLA were kids (not that you'd know it from the letters page), but most kids learn how to tell time before they read, right?

So why is it that in JLA v1, #55, we see Hourman take a pill for his "hour of power", then go to" the other side of Earth-Two".

I'm sorry, but how did he get to China in less than an hour?

Most of the silver-age sillyness is just silly, but this actually made me go "now HOLD on," out loud.

Good thing my office door was closed.

[Jonathan Bogart]

This is what other storytelling industries (you know, the ones that make money) refer to as a "continuity error." That is, the story isn't consistent with itself. One of those things that can slip past a writer when he's trying to juggle several plots at once. (And, as was generally the case in the Silver Age, constantly under a big deadline.) Just a mistake, man.

[Cei-U!]

Permission to include your observation in the entry for that issue in my Collectors' Guide to Earth-2?

Cei-U!
I summon the good one!

[InfoBroker]

Short answer: NO! He didn't.

medium answer: Gardner Fox engaged in the work of writing comics and followed the prevailing editorial decisions/whims/winds of the time. What might seem silly now, was the audience, at least the perceived audience and the range that certain DC editors were aiming for at the time. Shifting times, shifting winds, shifting content...

Being a child of the time, I found the covers of mid 1960s DC comics to be insulting, and a bit annoying. Being more adult now, I can see the charm, and appreciate the audience they were aiming for. Still not my favorite comics of choice from that time period, but the very young audience that they aimed for, and the methods that some of DC editors used for market research, probably explains the sillyness factor.

By the summer of 1966, I was particularly annoyed at the campy Batman TV series and the comic employing the same gimmickry. Yet in early 1966, the Batman TV show was one of the many influences that got me interested in super-hero comics. My personal change of attitude was a part of going from 11 to 12 years old I guess.

Homing in on your specific incident with a follow-on query: Hourman's particular power range is not well known to me, and not for this particular time range. Some queries of the internet refer to the pill, Miraclo, as giving him super-human powers, including speed. I don't know if he is categorized in the range of a Johnny Quick, a Flash, a Quicksilver, or something even less super-speedster. Maybe someone else knows if his powers gave him the ability for world distance travel in mere minutes or seconds, and if it applies to his particular powers range in the silver-age.

- jb the "wondering how long he had to wait before taking another pill" ib :cool:

[Typo Lad]

Permission to include your observation in the entry for that issue in my Collectors' Guide to Earth-2?

Cei-U!
I summon the good one!

Sure.

Also, I'm waiting for the Key to go insane because GL wiped his mind a few issues before this.

[Cei-U!]

Homing in on your specific incident with a follow-on query: Hourman's particular power range is not well known to me, and not for this particular time range. Some queries of the internet refer to the pill, Miraclo, as giving him super-human powers, including speed. I don't know if he is categorized in the range of a Johnny Quick, a Flash, a Quicksilver, or something even less super-speedster. Maybe someone else knows if his powers gave him the ability for world distance travel in mere minutes or seconds, and if it applies to his particular powers range in the silver-age.

- jb the "wondering how long he had to wait before taking another pill" ib :cool:

Miraclo increased Hourman's speed enough that he could outrun a mid-1940s American automobile (see All-Star Squadron Annual #3) but there's no way he could have traveled halfway around the world under his own power within a single hour. The JSA didn't have teleportation technology at that time so Hourman must've traveled to Mongolia by other means, possibly the magic of Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt.

Also, as seen in both Showcase #55 and 56, he had to wait a full hour between doses.

Cei-U!
Knows his Earth-2 lore!

[InfoBroker]

Cei-U! Knows his Earth-2 lore!

Thanks Kurt. Had a feeling you had a fast lane for helping me with DC's mythos in this timeframe. So it would seem Hourman isn't likely to show up on any of the Flash's shortlist for speedster replacement, nor does his power tap into the speed force that Max Mecury was the first to tamper with extensively.

I suppose the hour wait between doses was a plot-device for several tales as well.

- jb the always wondering ib :cool:

[Jesse Hamm]

I wonder if Fox would have been flattered to learn that, decades in the future, adults would dissect his individual writing mistakes in an international forum? Or would that knowledge have just scared him to death?

Sometimes I picture myself as an elderly man, learning that a whole community of people has been collecting security camera footage of the coffee shop job I worked in my 20s, and that they're debating whether I put too much foam on a soy latte on Monday, June 4th, 1999.

[Sir Tim Drake]

I wonder if Fox would have been flattered to learn that, decades in the future, adults would dissect his individual writing mistakes in an international forum? Or would that knowledge have just scared him to death?

Sometimes I picture myself as an elderly man, learning that a whole community of people has been collecting security camera footage of the coffee shop job I worked in my 20s, and that they're debating whether I put too much foam on a soy latte on Monday, June 4th, 1999.

You sure did. I could barely drink it. :D

[Slam_Bradley]

Also, as seen in both Showcase #55 and 56, he had to wait a full hour between doses.

Cei-U!
Knows his Earth-2 lore!


Kurt, wasn't there at some point a 24 hour waiting period between doses of Miraclo, or am I on drugs?

[Typo Lad]

Miraclo increased Hourman's speed enough that he could outrun a mid-1940s American automobile (see All-Star Squadron Annual #3) but there's no way he could have traveled halfway around the world under his own power within a single hour. The JSA didn't have teleportation technology at that time so Hourman must've traveled to Mongolia by other means, possibly the magic of Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt.

Also, as seen in both Showcase #55 and 56, he had to wait a full hour between doses.



Wait...wait. You just answered my question!

He probably took a dose so he could run to the airport, then relaxed on the flight, then took another when he landed. It's over an hour flight.

That makes sense, since he has a slight charge when he gets to the fight scene. I bet he ran FROM the airport too.

There was a reason the Thunderbolt answer wouldn't work, but I've forgotten.

[Typo Lad]

I wonder if Fox would have been flattered to learn that, decades in the future, adults would dissect his individual writing mistakes in an international forum? Or would that knowledge have just scared him to death?

Sometimes I picture myself as an elderly man, learning that a whole community of people has been collecting security camera footage of the coffee shop job I worked in my 20s, and that they're debating whether I put too much foam on a soy latte on Monday, June 4th, 1999.

The difference is, unlike coffee, where someone would have to tape your making it, a comic is a product meant to be read and re-read and re-read.

[Roquefort Raider]

The JSA didn't have teleportation technology at that time so Hourman must've traveled to Mongolia by other means, possibly the magic of Johnny Thunder's Thunderbolt.



Kurt, consider yourself the proud winner of a coveted no-prize!!!

(Oops... wrong company).

[Cei-U!]

There was a reason the Thunderbolt answer wouldn't work, but I've forgotten.

Without the book in front of me I can't get too specific but if the Thunderbolt can teleport the Justice League from Earth-1, as indeed he does in #55, he can certainly do the same for Hourman. Mongolia, after all, is a big place and it's going to take one man, even a super-man, a long time to track down one guy... unless he has a magical assist. But, as I say, I need to go to the source before I declare that my final answer.

Cei-U!
I summon Regis!

[Typo Lad]

Reason why it wouldn't work:

Johnny was late for the meeting and hadn't shown up yet. he doesn't get involved until they get back.

[Cei-U!]

Reason why it wouldn't work:

Johnny was late for the meeting and hadn't shown up yet. he doesn't get involved until they get back.

That's right! Hmm. Well, I'd just chalk it up to sloppy scripting, then.

Cei-U!
I summon the oops!

[Lone Ranger]

Was Dr. Fate around?

I can't remember the JSA roll call for that ish.

Perhaps he could have cast a transportation spell and sent Tick Tock to China.

Is that possible?

[Typo Lad]

As I recall (sorry, digested a lot of issues today) Dr. Fate was not present. If he or Alan Scott GL had been there, the whole fight would have been ten minutes.

[gentlesatirist]

...in his soy latte post!

I think too often we don't realize the level of scrutiny we're applying to stories that were only one small chapter of a writer's or artist's career. This is why people get frustrated when they read interviews with Golden Age (or even Silver Age) comics pros who remember little or nothing about their days in the field. It was only a full-time, multi-year gig for a few of them. The rest did it for a while before moving into book or magazine illustration or art teaching or interior decorating or whatever.


- FE
Wickliffe OH

[Jesse Hamm]

The difference is, unlike coffee, where someone would have to tape your making it, a comic is a product meant to be read and re-read and re-read.

That's thankfully the case in today's market. But I imagine in the '60s they were designed to be read once or twice and eventually tossed out, never to survive more than a few months or years. A People Magazine-like shelf-life.

[Typo Lad]

What, you don't read people?

I'm not obsessing over this. it just struck me as a rather glaring hole in an otherwise pretty cool story.

Little black balls that turn people evil and give them powers. Cooooool.