Sunday, September 07, 2014

Today in Comics History, September 7: Well, it beats watching a rerun of American Dad



from "Roy Raymond's Greatest Challenge" in Detective Comics #240 (DC, February 1957), pencils and inks by Ruben Moreira

5 comments:

Blam said...

"Karen, I've something to tell you. If I don't keep saying your name out loud, I'll forget it, Karen."

Smurfswacker said...

I was surprised to see the guy in this story was really an alien. In the Roy Raymond stories I read as a kid (1960s) the fantasy elements always turned out to be hoaxes with one of those preposterous Silver Age "scientific" explanations. Each story had a panel in which Roy thinks "Hmmm..." meaning he's figured things out. Since the writers didn't play fair we readers could never figure out the gimmick for ourselves and had to wait for Roy to enlighten us..

Bully said...

Same here, Smurfswacker! Virtually all of the Roy Raymond stories are him figuring out how something "Impossible...But True!" is actually a hoax, with "did you spot the clues?" solutions. But since i've been looking at them, I've found three or four in which really out-of-this-world stuff happens.

Has Roy Raymond ever been retconned to live in the DC Universe?

Blam said...

He sure has, Bully. Check your copy of Detective Comics #500: He's one of the characters from bygone days convened in the Slam Bradley chapter.

Blam said...

Wait! He appeared on Earth-One before that. I was trying to remember if he was in the 1998 Earth-Zero JLA: Year One miniseries amongst the heroes who appeared between the Golden Agers and the would-be Silver Agers (who by then had debuted in, like, the year Crisis was published…) when I realized I was thinking about its spiritual predecessor, the secret pre-origin of the League in 1977's Justice League of America #144. Roy Raymond is there among the characters from betwixt the Golden and Silver Ages of the Superhero like the Blackhawks and the Challengers of the Unknown and Adam Strange.