Speed Saunders and the Lost Ape

I'm sure that in your idle moments you have wondered what would happen if Speed Saunders took on a gorilla.  Let's find out!

What? Me, worry?

Sordid? Ew. What makes them say the waterfront is sordid?

DEAD END for these city kids. Officer Krupe Speed ain't.

Nothing sordid about an adult watching of bunch of semi-naked and naked boys cavorting in the toxic waterside of a major city.  Besides, these are Speed's pals.

Naked boy's on a first-name basis with The Speed Saunders and they are gorilla-gawking pals.  He's the Jimmy Olsen of the Saundersverse.

Not a ton, by the way; 500 lbs, tops.  Still, that doesn't look like an especially safe way to escort a gorilla.

I wonder where they are taking him!

In the Saundersverse, that's the same as a menagerie (or "zoo").

But the gorilla's stay at the zoo will be very short!

Well ,THAT's creepy. Even for a gorilla-napping.

The gorilla's disappearance causes alarm.

That is one ominous inky blackness.

That's a pretty cool use of the real-world headline clippings.  Whatever you can think of, the Golden Age probably did it first and you've just never seen it.

Fortunately, Golden Age citizens are a pretty jaded lot, so it's not like they are going to

Hm.  I guess gorillas were still relatively uncommon in comics at that point.

Speculation runs wild; where could an escaped gorilla have gone?

I really wish those two ladies had become recurring characters, just popping in for a synchronized "OMIGOSH" when appropriate (and, really, there are few points in any Speed Saunders story where OMIGOSH would NOT be an appropriate thing to say).

Their speculation is all in vain, for none would guess that the gorilla is DRIVING AWAY INTO THE COUNTRYSIDE MILES FROM THE ZOO.

Okay, fine; he's not driving. At least, I can't SEE whether's he driving.  

Turns out the gorilla has been kidnapped by a MAD SCIENTIST.

How dramatic!

Hm, don't think I've seen a mad scientist in a Speed Saunders story before.  But like Terentius Afer, nothing human (or even SIMIAN) is alien to Speed Saunders. So, naturally he gets assigned to the case.

At this point, they were still clinging to the charade that Speed Saunders was answerable to others and had to be "assigned" to cases. How quaint.

What does a mad scientist want a gorilla for? BRAIN SURGERY, what else?

Hm. I guess Dolores Winters wasn't available.

Note that this is nearly 15 years before The Gorilla Boss of Gotham did this and FORTY years before the Ultra-Humanite pulled this trick.

NEVER forget the Gorilla Boss of Gotham. Those who do are condemned to repeat him.

But actually, these mad scientists aren't transplanting any of their own brains into the gorilla; just... "a brain".  And even THAT isn't quite right because when the gorilla awakens, he doesn't think he's a human who OMIGOSH has been put in the body of a gorilla. 

Step 1. Obtain one (1) gorilla and one (1) human brain.
Step 2. Combine them by means of mad science.
Step 3. Get rich off this, somehow. And show all those fools who said you were mad, MAD!

No. He's just... a gorilla who suddenly has the intelligence of a human.  Maybe the scientist just squeezed the smart-juice out of the human brain and into the gorilla brain.  I don't know how these things work. I'm no brain surgeon, after all.

This is what happens when doctors don't have sufficient nursing staff.

Jeez, these scientists didn't really plan much beyond "finish surgery", and off to lunch they went, leaving their simian subject to wander off into the Saundersverse.

Sounds like they could have used some more brain juice.

What DO you do if you're a post-op gorilla with a human mind and poor grammar?  Obviously, you hop a freight train.

It's still a Speed Saunders story, after all; gotta move things along.

Then, in what seems increasing like a funny animal comic, the gorilla goes to a construction site to take a nap, because, I dunno, maybe it reminds him of Borneo.

PANIC!

Apparently, whatever little rest the gorilla got did wonders, at least for his elocution.

I swear that "Hey, what ails these people" is the single funniest thing I have ever seen a gorilla say.

Weapons are procured and the gorilla is chased, much to his growing consternation.

See, in a Captain Marvel comic, this funny guy would wind up befriending Billy Batson.  But Billy does not hang out with the boys who swim naked under the watchful eye of ace investigators.

But there's a reason for that old Borneo saying: "Jangan sekali-kali mengetuk gorila pintar di tapak pembinaan."

"Never corner an intelligent gorilla in a construction site."

Bet none of you chose "gorilla throws dynamite" in your What Happens Next betting pool.  But don't worry; I mean, it's not like a gorilla can accurately hit anybody with a stick of dynamite.

Sewers, however, are pretty easy targets.

So, we're going to ignore the fact that dynamite doesn't explode from concussion; it requires a trigger mechanism.

It looks something like this.

Scientifically accurate or not, the gorilla has just killed Many People, which makes him... Speed Saunders' most dangerous foe. Didn't see that coming.

There is a LOT of cartoon physics going on in this story.

These events do not endear humanity to our now grouchy gorilla and he swears vengeance, like Frankenstein's scorned monster.

The bandage is a nice touch.

Would've gotten back on the freight train myself.

And whom does he find back at the waterfront?

THE DEAD END KIDS.

But, against all reason, Speed intuited that gorilla would return there and has been lying in wait. Or he's just there hanging out watching adolescent boys fish.  Speed's a strange guy.

"I'll just watch quietly while he rends the brunet limb from limb.  
Then I'll save the blond kid, whom I like."

At this very early point in Speed's career, the writer (Gardner Fox, btw) was still making things happened at the waterfront, because ORIGINALLY Speed is supposed to be with the River Patrol.  It's a few more issues before Speed's apotheosis and he becomes the Platonic Ideal of Authority, capable of intervening in any situation, commandeering any vehicle, and subordinating any uniformed personnel, because, well, it's just FASTER, dang it.

SLOWLY?!  Remember this panel well, folks. It is the last time you will ever see Speed Saunders do anything "slowly".

A trap? Okay, that's more Speed-like.  I guess all the while the gorilla's been killing scores of people downtown, Speed's been at the central branch of the metropolitan library, researching gorilla traps, probably in the original Malaysian.  I can't wait to see what he's cooked up!

There aren't a LOT of wordless Speed Saunders panels, but each one is a context-free masterpiece of incomprehensibility.

TIME TO SPRING SPEED'S TRAP!

<eyeroll>

Really, Speed? You just magically called forth a bunch of Keystone Cops with billy clubs, as if you were a Heroclix figure with the special power to generate free bystander pogs?  And you thought that would capture a 500-pound intelligent gorilla? You need to leave the waterfront beat pronto, so you can spend more time at the library instead of watching naked boys swimming. 

Fortunately someone ELSE is there to take command of the situation!

THE MAD SCIENTIST!  Must have lunched near the Waterfront.

Phew!  As this creature's creator he'll be able to settle things down.

"I, Roskoffin, The Great Scientist!"
I love the Golden Age.

The Creature, overwhelmed by the desire for the loving approval of his Creator, embraces him in weeping relief!

Or..."BOP!"  Looks like the gorilla intends to put the 'coffin' in Roskoffin, or vice versa.

Wow. It's almost as if the mad scientist who decided to Tamper In God's Domain was dangerously overconfident. Lesson: if you are in Speed Saunders story do not try to exert any authority unless YOU are Speed Saunders.

Whoa. 

OMIGOSH! Is this where Speed does something amazing to stop the gorilla and save the scientist?

Hm. Apparently not.

So. No Speedsplanation.  No bizarre leaps of deduction (unless you count the "I figured he'd come back to the waterfront").  No gunfights. No fistfights.  No tesseracting.  No shadow-traveling.  No stomach-pumping.  Speed... doesn't do anything. At all.  Speed serves no narrative purpose in his own story.  It's not that the story didn't require Speed; it didn't require ANY protagonist AT ALL. 

Just when I think there's nothing Speed can do to surprise me...

Speed does nothing. And thereby surprises me.  You win again, Speed Saunders.

Heroclix Custom of the Week: Illoralan Wingors

This is the fifth in my ongoing series of custom figures I have made or had made to add to my collection of regular Heroclix figures.

In our last installment, we immortalized Green-Hatted Exposition Man, whose transquartomuralistic communications let even the most dense readers follow the otherwise incomprehensible exploits of the Silver Age Martian Manhunter. Despite his extraordinary function, Green-Hatted Exposition Man is the most ordinary-looking of characters.  Not so this week's featured customized character!

In honor of Hawkman's impending return and newfound prominence in the DC "Metal", I give you:

THE ILLORALAN WINGOR!

Or as oi polloi would say "the winged gorilla".

Yeah, back in the Silver Age, all the heroes, even down-to-earth detectives like Batman, dealt with really weird creatures, often from space.  How much weirder, then, it used to get when the hero was an actual space alien himself, particularly on given to dressing like a bird and using tricked-out versions of ancient weapons, for no sensible reason.

And the Silver Age penchant for gorillas is legendary.  So it was quite inevitable that Hawkman would at some point fight a winged alien gorilla.  It's impossible to explain simply, but suffice to say the planet Illoral suffered from some sort of reverse-evolution plague, which turned its winged humanoids into winged apes (called "Wingors").

The Wizkids company has (oddly!) never chosen to make proper Heroclix figures for the Illoralan Wingors.  Fortunately, I found a ready-made sculpt that I changed not at all: the "Derhii" figure from the Pathfinder Battles miniature game. 

Other then being grey instead of brown,
that's spot on I think.  And I let him keep the sword, he seems happier that way.

In since the Illoralan Wingor is technically a generic figure that fights in groups...

...I got myself a posse of them.

There USED to be bananas in that fruit bowl.

Even weirder, the best dial I found for them was Marvel's 75-point Jessica Jones:

Which I have interpreted as follows:

Sure, they take up too much room in my Heroclix storage boxes.  But, hey, it's the Hawks fighting flying gorillas, people; it's worth it.  Beside Hawkman's world is woefully under-represented in Heroclix.  Speaking of which, which Hawkman character would YOU like to see in Heroclix...?

Heroclix Mod Mod

I'd say we're due for a Heroclix post!


Wizkids is pumping out the DC 'clix this year: The Brave & the Bold set at year's start, two
starter/collector minisets (Blackest Night and Brightest Day seven-piece sets) , and the forthcoming DC 75th Anniversary Set.






Some of the 75th Anniversary pieces have been revealed already, such as long-awaited Golden Agers like the original Mr. Terrific and Crimson Avenger, essential foes like Ragdoll and Ocean Master, boss/minions like Sgt. Rock/Easy Company, more full-spectrum lanterns, and wacky factors like Sargon the Sorceror and Detective Chimp.


But what would a DC Anniversary set be without.... gorillas?







Okay, I'm not expecting "JLApe" pieces (glorious though those would be). But I will be surprised and disappointed if we don't get something like gorilla generics for Grodd (as part of the latest craze for more functional generics that use some sort of 'minion' power that weighs heavily in favor of using them with their appropriate 'boss' figures). C'mon; you KNOW you want to be able to field a team of nothing but gorillas.


So I'm preparing. My (plastic) crack customizing team in the sub-sub-basement of the Pentagon (you know-- where they kept the Telephone Avatar?) has prepared this little gem representing one of the great One-Off Gorilla Characters of all time....

THE MOD GORILLA BOSS

For those few of you who don't already know, the Mod Gorilla Boss was a criminal mastermind who drank a "gorilla serum" (I bet you didn't know there WAS such a thing! Darn you, FDA!) and probably spent most of his ill-gotten gorilla-crime-gains at Gambi's tailor shop buying silverback-sized pinstriped zoot suits and french-cuff shirts. And he fought Animal Man. And by "fought" I mean, "tossed him around like a ragdoll until the gorilla serum wore off".

Naturally, a character this inspired belongs in my Heroclix collection. And so, behold:


I considered giving him a Special Trait that lets him use Animal Man as a permanent Light Object if he manages to kayo him. But I think I'll just keep that as a House Rule.