Doll Man: Blowing Up The Help.

Ladies and gentlemen, Martha Roberts (from Doll Man Quarterly #3):

Martha stops off at an orphanage to pick up some fresh orphans for her activities.

Darrell "Doll Man" Dane:
"Orphans? How tedious. Are they contagious?"

Martha is a trustee. 

Darrell: "I'll remain here, plucking my eyebrows, lest I catch any orphanic diseases.  Is orphanism contagious?  No self-respecting hero should be an orphan."

Martha, as an absentee trustee, is shocked to find:

Martha: "Don't mind me, MISSUS Noble, I'm just accentuating my free-flowing bachelorette tresses in contrast to your de-sexualized butch cut."

that there are orphans at the orphanage.

"O-o-o-ORphans?!"
Yes, there are orphans at the orphanage of which you are a trustee, Martha. I'd hate to see your reaction to Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Mercifully, I'm skipping most of the scenes of fifth columnist midgets disguised as orphan boys.

Pictured: Comforting o-o-o-orphans.

Blow up the help? No wonder she's upset; good help is hard to find.

Martha was a pioneer in Rule 34.

#snowwhitefanfic

Just in case you are wondering what Darrell "Doll Man' Dane is doing during all this.

Getting his *** kicked by a Nazi dwarf, named "The Dwarf", who is the master of the midget fifth columnists, because of course he is.

Doll Man saves Martha (and the factory), as you would expect.  The midgets survive, but the dwarf succumbs to comic book irony.

There is a lot to deride in Doll Man stories, but Doll Man creator Will Eisner was a master of innovative panel layout.

Doll Man Moment: Proto-Pym

 Remember, long, LONG, before Hank Pym 

slapped anybody...

there was Doll Man.

Doll Man AT WAR

 I was going to tell you about when (The) Doll Man joined the army.

"Managed to get your shirt off, I see?

How he was drafted and how important and unique that was among comic book heroes of the time.

Lines are for the little people. Or people not little ENOUGH.

That he was trained in a one-panel surrealistic montage.

Who He Is and How He Came To Be

When he decides to investigate a secret because he's bored and curious.

Your own 'time to become the Doll Man' may vary.

About how he assesses its function immediately. 

Like Batman, Doll Man is a scientist.

then watches as things go awry;

Sadly, not Doll Man.

very awry.

Army regulations require all buildings be plainly labeled for our soldiers, but with camouflaged signs so that the enemy can't read them from a distance.

And so decides to investigate further,

Doll Man Fact: due to his tiny size, Doll Man can breathe underwater if he damned well wants to.

piggybacking on an enemy sub to its undersea lair,

But then gets bored again,

and while enemies try to take control of the radio-torpedo to kill the President,

"Someone drag Henry Wallace off the tennis court, pronto!"

Doll Man goes temporarily insane again (as does at least once a story)

The real crazy starts when the eyes disappear.

decides to live out his Bulletman fantasy

Can't comment on periscope-bending;
too focused on Doll Man's awesome "but".

then rides and (somehow) redirects the radio-torpedo

Doll Man Fact: due to his tiny size, Doll Man is immune to vertigo.

saving the president's life and destroying the enemy sub, just in time...

Reminder: the last person who came back to 'face the music' in a Doll Man story got shot to death.

to get back for KP duty.

Surely there must be some faster way to peel potatoes at six-inches high.

And how this became the template for his famous war-time adventures.  But...

I desperately want that parrot to bite him in half like a cracker.

in the next issue all this was completely forgotten, never to be referred to again, as Doll Man worked with a monkey and a parrot to solve a case.

So, instead of any of that, I will simply remind you that if you think today's comics recklessly disregard continuity...

NEVER buy a pet as a gift; ever.

it could be a lot worse.

Doll Man versus a Box of Candy, Part 3

 When last we left Doll Man he was hesitant to attack a foe who was crippled.

The one-legged man, however, was un-hesistant to attack a foe who was six-inches tall and mentally divergent.

One-Leg is the same man who, upon first perceiving Doll Man as a threat, said "Seize the impetuous little insect!", so we already know he has the stuff of true villainy. Sure enough, he immediately crafts an ironic death for Doll Man with a snide comment that no one can hear.

Oh, yeah; that's the stuff. It's the gratuitous "little" that really does it.

While his two-legged cronies lie around, knocked unconscious by Doll Man, One-Leg just ties a rock to the box and throws it off a pier.

How deliciously dismissive; "Well, that was fun! Who's for Chinese?"

I bet he whistled as he walked away.

Of course, as Easily Escaped Deathtraps go, a wet cardboard box isn't particularly threatening to a six-inch man with the strength of a six-foot man.

Eye-witness Peter the Pufferfish wasn't able to convince Aquaman that this actually happened; "Look, Pete, I know you must have seen something, but, landsmen aren't that tiny and they simply don't come in chocolate boxes. I think you're spending too much time in San Francisco Bay."

Personally, I'd imagine re-enlarging oneself would be a pretty automatic reflex in getting to the surface faster.  Is Doll Man's chemically-altered brain able to resist such reflexes? Or maybe his full-size strength is able to propel his lightweight form to the surface with the speed of a bullet? In my experience, human beings are not designed to be propelled through the water at bullet-speed, so that would seem to be a problem in itself. For some reason, I have no trouble understanding The Atom, but The Doll Man leaves me continually perplexed.

Is Doll Man still buoyant at that size? Does it make a difference...?

So, now, Doll Man is TICKED.  

"Oh, no, you di-in't!

NOW we are going to see Doll Man dole out some vengeful butt-whippings!

So, is that suit perfectly dry or completely soaked? Show your work.

He's been holding back with these saboteurs, giving them warnings and love-taps and the chance to reconsider their actions, like he's the Wonder Woman of Escher City.  But NOW?! No more Mister Nice Doll.

"Hullo, Letterman General? I just wanted to make sure you have enough hospital beds for the passel of pummeled saboteurs I'm planning on sending your way!"

That's the wind up, and here's the pitch, HERE IT COMES!

... whut?

He... finally just calls the authorities?

"Caught by one tiny man trapped in a wet candy box at the bottom of the ocean, according to eyewitness Mr. P. Pufferfish of San Francisco Bay, now being treated at the Letterman General mental trauma ward."

"Mine yer own business, flatfoot, I'm admiring myself."

It... it WAS a cop. Several cops.  Doll Man just called the cops, who apprehended the saboteurs (and somehow convicted them with zero evidence of wrongdoing other than a wet candy box).  All Doll Man did was get his *** kicked by a cripple and thrown into the ocean and then took credit. 

Oh, well; that's our Doll Man!

Doll Man versus a Box of Candy, Part 2

When we last left Doll Man, he had surreptitiously ensconced himself inside the bomb that the saboteurs planned to use to destroy the S.S. Viceroy, for some unspecified reason.  Why destroy the Viceroy, rather than some other ship? Who knows; maybe it picked the wrong piece of candy?

Are ships that unguarded? If so, it's a wonder they don't blow up more frequently.

Once the saboteur, has planted the bomb, Doll Man simply gets out of it and throws in the drink, where it does nothing because I guess Doll Man deactivated it or bombs don't like water.

So Green Suit Saboteur has to return to the office of Mr. Gruber (who's going to be "sore as all get-out") to "face the music".

Just realize that any bugs that hit Doll Man's face while he's riding along jauntily on the car's front bumper would be the size of his head.

Turns out that music is super-Locrian and green-suit's lifespan is about to be seriously diminished.

Guess who's sore as all get-out NOW.

If what Gruber says is true and "you know the penalty" then Green Suit, who voluntarily went back to get killed, is too dumb to be a saboteur.  Or alive, for that matter.

How that dead body hasn't slid off that tilted stage into the orchestra pit, I have no idea.

The saboteurs are part of larger operation, which goes a long way to explaining Doll Man's Simple Plan (tm); he's trying to catch all of them, I guess. But there's really no sense given why Doll Man would know that.  The intelligence of someone who can create a shrinking potion is beyond my ken.  

As is the intelligence of someone who would actually drink it.

In order to foil the next scheme, Doll Main trails the remaining saboteur (Mr. Blue Suit) through the dizzying Escherian nightmare that is Doll Man's city.  Let's just call it Escher City, why don't we?

Is Doll Man following the saboteur
OR
is the saboteur following Doll Man?
YOU CAN'T DECIDE NOW, CAN YOU!?!?!

Then he clobbers the saboteur in a dark alley;

Since Doll Man is clearly striking FROM the brightly-lit street, the point of the dark alley escapes me.  Perhaps Doll Man is a chiaroscuro fan.

uses a callbox to direct the police to the saboteurs' office (which he could have done to begin with);

We know that Ray Palmer's voice as Atom sounds normal because comic book physics.  But chemically-shrunken Doll Man probably sounds like a mouse in a Disney film.

but then the chemicals hit his brain and Doll Man, having reached his quota of sanity for the day, takes the box of chocolates and decides to FLY IT TO THE WEST COAST.  

No, I don't know where the suit comes from either.

No, really.

Every super-criminal in '60s Gotham City covets that post office as a hideout.

So Doll Man FLIES the package out to the severely distorted post office in San Francisco (designed by an Escher City architect, it seems). Then, after the P.O. is closed, he HIDES HIMSELF IN THE CHOCOLATE BOX.

HOW DOES HE DO THIS?! It's unconceivable.
Also; imagine spending all night inside a box of candy.

The West Coast Attenders, under the leadership of Long John Silver, pick up the package and the tiny man it contains.

"WHO TH'?" amuses me more than it should.

Chaos ensues.

"Seize the presumptuous little insect!" would immediately qualify this guy for the Doll Man Rogues Gallery, if they'd bothered to give him a name.

Doll Man has little trouble dispatching the three stooges, but his hesitance to wallop a cripple is his undoing.

Famous last thoughts before getting your head squished by a crutch.

*SWAT*!!! The Golden Age really deserved more sound effectx.

What is to become of The Doll Man now...?!?!