568 – Time Spins Away

In “Captain Kent the Terrible!”, a story from Superman #89 (March 1954), time travel has become an effortless thing for Superman. Spinning around faster than the speed of light, he travels back into the past to investigate a story about a “Captain Kent” that the Compass, a rival newspaper, has dug up. Of course, it […]

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568 – Superboy Robots

In Adventure Comics #199 (February 1954), Superboy discovers an underground civilization of humans. Queen Vya followed the surface civilization via “sonar television”, learned of Superboy’s exploits, and then created a life-like robot with all of Superboy’s powers. Yet this civilization apparently still prefers to live underground. And the “upper world”, having learned of this civilization, […]

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567 – Superboy Grounded

In “When Superboy Couldn’t Fly!” from Superboy #32 (Feb 1954), Superboy starts to make a bunch of costly blunders when flying. The Major of Smallville serves Superboy an injunction that he must stop flying. The blunders were due to “Blimp” Beagle sabotaging Superboy’s exploits, and Superboy is able to put him behind bars. Remember way […]

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564 – Batcave Origin Retcon

In Detective Comics #205 (Jan 1954), the Bat-Cave is given a revised origin in which Bruce Wayne discovers the cave only after purchasing his house. This is a pretty significant ret-con, given that most Batman origins depict that Bruce inherited the stately Wayne manor from his parents.

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560 – More Swan Superman

In Action Comics #189 (Dec 1953), the formidable team of Edmond Hamilton (writer) and Curt Swan (penciller) team up again – so it seems like I was wrong that Swan left DC soon after “The Mightiest Team in the World!“. The story is kind of meh, but what I love about it is the breath […]

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559 – Bat-Recidivism, Part Two-Face

Only one month after Catwoman went back to being a criminal, Two-Face is also re-scarred in a freak accident when Harvey Dent tried to stop some safe-crackers in Batman #81 (December 1953). Unlike Catwoman, who only kept her paws clean for a couple years, Harvey Dent has been a reformed man for ten years. Yes, […]

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558 – Amnesiac Clark… again

Well it’s been a couple years since we’ve had a prominent Superman-gets-amnesia story, so it’s time for World’s Finest #68 (Nov 1953) and “The Menace from the Stars!”. In this story, Superman saves the planet from an asteroid by smashing it and forcing it into a steady orbit around the Earth. Unfortunately, a spectroscope reveals […]

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557 – Bat-Recidivism

Despite three years of good behavior and reform, Selina Kyle gets upset when a newspaper runs a story about Catwoman being defeated by Batman in Detective Comics #203 (Nov 1953). This triggers her to put back on the costume and guess what… she’s a criminal again! I guess maybe DC realized that reforming some of […]

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556 – Super-Radioactivity

In “The Spectral Superman!”, a story in Action Comics #188 (November 1953), Superman heroically stops a nuclear reactor from exploding in Metropolis. As a result, he finds out his entire body is radioactive… maybe permanently! Despite the super-melancholia that descends on Superman, he still manages to foil some criminals, even though his radioactivity continues to […]

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