I was going to tell you about when (The) Doll Man joined the army.
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| "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.
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| Lines are for the little people. Or people not little ENOUGH. |
That he was trained in a one-panel surrealistic montage.
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| Who He Is and How He Came To Be |
When he decides to investigate a secret because he's bored and curious.
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| Your own 'time to become the Doll Man' may vary. |
About how he assesses its function immediately.
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| Like Batman, Doll Man is a scientist. |
then watches as things go awry;
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| Sadly, not Doll Man. |
very awry.
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| 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,
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| 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,
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| "Someone drag Henry Wallace off the tennis court, pronto!" |
Doll Man goes temporarily insane again (as does at least once a story)
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| The real crazy starts when the eyes disappear. |
decides to live out his Bulletman fantasy
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| Can't comment on periscope-bending; too focused on Doll Man's awesome "but". |
then rides and (somehow) redirects the radio-torpedo
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| 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...
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| 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.
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| 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...
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| 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...
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| NEVER buy a pet as a gift; ever. |
it could be a lot worse.
That's my favorite montage. Doll Man used as target practice! Doll Man stands awkwardly off balance! Doll Man (or maybe just some weirdo) machine guns his alarm clock! Doll Man wakes up his bayonet at dawn with Reveille! And now, he's a soldier, trained to elitely ask to see the manager...for the next hour or so.
ReplyDeleteAnd Sergeant...how can I put this delicately? Given the way that he's drawn, is it possible that Doll Man didn't stay in the Army because maybe he joined the wrong one? He may look somewhat like a foreign villain.
I, too, was impressed by the symbolism of machine-gunning the alarm clock. "I could be out DOLL MANNING but instead I'm here KILLING TIME!"
ReplyDeleteI'm beginning to think that Doll Man, like Martian Manhunter, manifests whatever power he needs in any given situation.
ReplyDeleteWait, what if Doll Man is one of J'onn's many human guises that he's assumed over the years?
Well, now I wonder if "killing time" was actually supposed to be the joke. But then, thinking about that collage-montage, even though the song wasn't widely used as anti-war for another couple of decades, I also wonder if the river (I suppose it could be just a narrow angle of the harbor) is a Down by the Riverside reference. Certainly Doll Man ain't gonna study war no more, after all.
ReplyDelete