#congo bill

[comiccoverarchive]

Action Comics #52 (July 14th, 1942)

Art by Fred Ray

[pulpsandcomics2]

Action Comics #52 September 1942

[nerds-yearbook]

The anthology comic Adventure Comics 283 was published with a cover date of April 1961. In the Superboy segment, the Phantom Zone, Phantom Zone Projector, General Zod, and Dr Xadu were introduced created by Robert Bernstein and George Papp. The issue also marked the end of the Congo Bill/Congorilla being in the back up story in the title. ("Superboy: The Phantom Superboy", "Congorilla: The Lion with the Double Identity", Adventure Comics 283, DC Comic Event)

[dcdreamblog]

So I came across an old newspaper clipping of a team after the JSA, but before the Justice Experience, called the Justice Alliance. They can’t have been around long, because we know Captain Comet left Earth early into his career.

But of them, I’ve only ever heard of Comet and Congorilla, though I think Tiger Man might have been part of Guy Gardner’s hangers on for a time?

Can you tell us anything about them?

The Justice Alliance, like the Justice Experience after them was the proof of a truism in my profession. Once the superheroic cat was let out of the bag, it was impossible to put it back in. Superhuman adventurers and do gooders have existed since the beginning of human records and most likely before they've just gone by the names and categories of humanities Gods and Monsters for millennia up until the 1940s brought them into the limelight of a world that not only required them the most but also made them impossible to fully disbelieve with the advent of worldwide communication and photographic evidence mixed with the general fading of magical thinking in exchange for the growth of science.

Despite the HUAC's best attempts, and even with the passing of the Keene Act, the things that went bump in the night whether they be human crime, occult incursion or invasion from beyond the stars were never going to slink quietly back into the background and evil always summons heroes to challenge it wherever it hides. Even when superheroes were being officially suppressed in the United States, superhuman incidents didn't slow down and eventually when facing a case that was too large for any of the five of them to overcome alone the team known as the Justice Alliance formed. Like you said its first two members are easy. Captain Comet was in reality Adam Blake, mutated by a comet that passed over the place of his birth his mental and physical abilities outstripped those of mortal men. Congorilla was and is African adventurer Bill Glenmorgan part of a profession that doesn't really exist anymore, he had been given a magical ring that at the time allowed him to switch his consciousness between his human self and that of a large, golden haired gorilla.

Prince Ra Man (far left, in green) is a being from the extradimensional Ra-Realm which holds either the Egyptian Gods of myth or beings that greatly resemble them. Swapping places with supernatural detective Mark Merlin, Ra Man was the original nemesis of the villainous Eclipso

Automan (Bronze, robot) was invented by Professor Miller Sterling as one of the earliest public experiments in computer cognition. Working beyond his wildest dreams the robot became self aware, setting itself up as a "Robot for Hire".

Tiger Man (you know which one) is in reality Desmond Farr, when traveling in Bombay (now Mumbai) Desmond and his brother Dean were cursed with the ability to transform into half human tigers with the obvious benefits of the transformation as well as the drawbacks of being a 7 foot bipedal tiger. Their breakup was down to a single large external factor that exacerbated various internal factors among the members.

The Keene Act was still in effect, and importantly, being strictly enforced. Whenever the heroes appeared, even in the aftermath of battle with a known criminal they were assaulted by the police and this hounding by law enforcement only became more pronounced as the team's short career went on. Multiple attempts to establish permanent methods of communication or headquarters for the team were disrupted by police raids and investigations were underway attempting to uncover the heroes' identities where applicable for the sake of prosecuting the "accomplices" among their friends and family.

This ended up encouraging what would be, for the most part, very short careers. Captain Comet, feeling that his advanced abilities pushed him beyond the bounds of earth, left for Space where he became a well beloved hero in many sectors of the galaxy by the time other human heroes would make their way to the stars.

Congorilla would find his home in Central Africa where he had spent most of his adult life, only returning to the larger superhero community in fits and starts until very recently

Prince Ra Man would eventually be called back to his home dimension to take over the throne when that responsibility passed to him.

Automan would, seeing the bigotry and unkindness of modern humanity place himself in stasis until such a time as he judged our species might have grown beyond our cold war hatreds. He is not meant to wake up for nearly 7 decades and his body is in storage at an undisclosed location until then.

Tiger Man would return to India where he would become a guardian of the Indian jungle's many arcane secrets (and generally a defender of India's northern peoples) he has only been spotted recently among the cadre of American adventurer Buck Wargo but he seems to have no interest in giving wider human society another chance, especially not western American society. In the end, the lesson is the same as the Justice Experience. They were there for us when we needed them but we were too afraid of those who would not bend to systems of power, those who stood tall in the name of justice for ALL that we pushed them away and we're all very lucky that the consequences of that decision were not even more dire.

[sarksarkos]

Superman '61: No Black People in Africa

I have been crashing the fuck out today so we're only looking at one story right now. This is Action Comics #280, and this is a great cover. There's an effect called "masking" where objects or people are drawn more realistic in order to distance them from the audience. You can see here, Superman, Lois and the rest are more cartoonish but Brainiac is disturbingly realistic and it goes right into the uncanny valley. More to the point, this cover actually happens in this story, in the context you think it does! Welcome to the Gutters!

The story, Brainiac's Super-Revenge, takes place in "the African jungle," where the Daily Planet crew have gone to report on a "native uprising." Hoo boy. As you can already tell by the title of this post, this issue isn't going to have any kind of representation of any kind of African people, whether real or conjured from the fevered imaginations of white people in the 1960s. In fact, despite being set in Africa, the only non-white person who will show up at all is Brainiac, and that very much Does Not Count.

I'm not gonna sugarcoat it, comics of this time were very racist. Usually not, you know, overtly so, with exceptions like fucking Chop-Chop from Blackhawk, but more in the case that people of color would just not appear at all. The world is just in a state of eternal segregation, and not even a trip to Africa could make a person of color appear on panel.

We'll talk about one of the rare exceptions much later, but this was very much an enforced thing. The Comics Code Authority, whose logo you can see in the upper right corner of the cover, would notoriously try to crack down on people of color appearing in comic books. There was no written rule against it, as is usually the case, but higher-ups would use their authority to try and strongarm publishers out of printing their stories.

There's a famous example of a story called Judgment Day, which the CCA tried to block from publication because the protagonist was black, despite that being essential to the anti-racism message at the heart of the story. EC Comics publisher William Gaines threatened to sue to keep the issue from being blocked. If you've ever seen "Far Beyond the Stars", the Deep Space Nine episode where Ben Sisko is a sci-fi writer in the 50s, it's exactly That Kind Of Bullshit.

Anyway, back to the story we're actually talking about. The Daily Planet crew is in Africa, looking at some gorillas, who are seemingly being led by a much larger ape with golden fur. Clark Kent has already noped out so that Superman can come along without dealing with any secret identity nonsense, so Perry White is taking his place in the field. Then, in an unrelated turn of events, Brainiac shows up in his little space putt-putt bubble.

Brainiac's appearance here is just happenstance. He didn't have any clever plan involving mind controlling gorillas or anything, he just chose today to attack. He actually spent several pages interviewing space criminals from a prison plan to help him in this plan, but he winds up not going with any of them and so the whole thing is pointless. Braniac takes out Superman with a single Kryptonite grenade, and then shrinks everyone down to doll size. There's some Honey, I Shrunk the Kids antics, as seen on the cover, and Brainiac then executes phase 2 of his plan.

With our heroes already shrunk, Brainiac tosses out a bottle, embiggens it so it traps them all like spiders under a drinking glass, and then re-shrinks it down to portable size. Somehow this doesn't result in Superman and the others getting double-shrunk? I guess his shrink ray has a minimum size setting or something. Since he has the villains at his mercy, Brainiac then takes this opportunity to examine a convenient distraction over there out of earshot, something that his 12th-level intellect will tell him has never gone wrong before.

Shockingly, the distracting thing was a distraction! Superman is still suffering the effect of the Kryptonite bomb and can't break out, but the golden ape that happened to get trapped with them is able to effect an escape using what appears to be extranormal intelligence. This is the surprise guest star of this issue, one William Glenmorgan, otherwise known as Congo Bill, otherwise otherwise known as Congorilla.

Congo Bill is one of those Great White Hunter characters in the vein of Alan Quatermain or... some second example. I'm sure there's loads. He first appeared all the way back in 1940, in More Fun Comics #56. He was a feature in More Fun Comics until 1941, at which point he became a backup feature in Action Comics, where he stayed until issue #261, some 20 years later.

In 1959, Congo Bill was given a Silver Age makeover, and became known as Congorilla. After rescuing a medicine man, Congo Bill is given a magical ring that lets him swap his mind with that of a golden-furred gorilla. So, not only do we have a gorilla that can think and fight like a man, we have a normal human who's hooting and hollering like a gorilla until the spell wears off. Despite this being self-evidently the greatest premise foe an action hero ever conceived, the character couldn't survive the superhero revolution and vanished into limbo by 1961.

Anyway. Even though he's so smart that his name has "Brain" in it, Brainiac is completely befuddled by the sight of a man making gorilla noises and lets Superman sneak up on him. And despite previously being strong enough to shrug off Superman's blows with his forcefield, Brainiac here goes down with a single half-hearted judo chop. The day is saved, thanks to Superman, and Congorilla helped.

This story is not particularly great, but I am a huge sucker for weird legacy characters getting a last shot at relevance, so I had a good bit of fun with this showing. I do wish we had more examples of DC superheroes meeting the weirder edge characters of their universe, but DC didn't indulge in that much before the Modern Age. Generally their attitude was to shunt these things away from the public eye rather than bring them back in as elements of the wider world. It's a shame, really, as I feel one of DC's strengths was how much they could publish besides superhero stories, and the moments when those disparate elements come together is like watching flour, eggs and sugar form a cake of their own volition. Until next time!

[alternateworldcomics]

DC Comics on Sale in November in 1954

[wanderingmind867]

Pretty much every major comic star of the 50s helped defend earth against the evil martians who'd come for J'onn J'onzz. Lois Lane, Jimmy Olsen, Plastic Man, The Challengers of the Unknown, the Blackhawks, Congo Bill, Vigilante, Rex the Wonder Dog and Robotman all show up. Besides Detective Chimp and Green Arrow, this story might just have every 50s DC star in it. (Justice League of America #144):

[palmanatomy]

Just read the first issue of cry for justice and theres another sentient ape every needs to know about

Congo bill I am obsessed with you