Here’s the thing about Halloween, guys – it seems to happen every year. Funny at that. But despite the proliferation of Halloween comics out there, it’s harder to single out Superman-specific comics that focus on the holiday, especially since I covered a lot of the big ones last year during the original Year of Superman. This week, I decided to take a slight detour, then, to a Super Friends comic, in which the unlikely partnership of Jimmy Olsen and the Wonder Twins save Halloween!
Super Friends #28
Title: Masquerade of Madness
Writer: E. Nelson Bridwell
Art and Cover: Ramona Fradon
Inks: Vince Colletta
It’s a wild Halloween party in Gotham City, and Zan and Jayna – the Wonder Twins – are enjoying watching their friends have fun with the premise. As they walk around having used their powers to turn into an abominable snowman and a black cat (respectively), Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson are having a little fun with their dates by dressing as Batman and Robin, and Jimmy Olsen has used the ol’ magic potion he’s used in the past to turn himself into a real werewolf for the party, with the promise from Jayna that she’ll kiss him after the party and end the curse. But when the clock strikes midnight and everyone is supposed to unmask, they find themselves trapped in the forms of their costumes, courtesy of the evil sorcerer Felix Faust.
Apparently, Bruce Wayne and several of the other guests each own ancient gems containing immense power that Faust wants to unlock, and he refuses to release the partygoers from their monstrous forms unless they surrender the gems to him. As most of the guests try fruitlessly to attack Faust, Jimmy lures the Wonder Twins away. Using the kind of logic that really only makes sense in cartoons like Super Friends, Jimmy explains that Faust’s magic only affected people wearing costumes – and since he’s a REAL werewolf, the spell didn’t work on him. The twins realize that the same spell prevents them from returning to their human forms, but they can affect SOME transformations, so Jayna turns into a cat-bat to fly off and find Wonder Woman and Aquaman while Jimmy summons Superman with his signal watch.
As the assembled heroes go on the attack, Faust forces the enchanted partygoers (dressed as Solomon Grundy, Bizarro, Swamp Thing, Man-Bat, and the Demon) to fight them back, raising some serious questions as to what kind of costumes you can find at Spirit Halloween in Gotham City. Like, is there a Joker costume? Would that be like a mass-produced outfit that lets you dress up like Charles Manson or something? The implication here is the creepiest thing about the issue. But anyway, what follows is several pages of the Justice League fighting Faust’s captives, in some amusing face-offs. Superman, naturally, fights “Bizarro,” Aquaman tackles “Swamp Thing” (whom he’s heard is pretty powerful), Batman fights “Grundy,” Robin takes “Man-Bat” and Wonder Woman lassos the “Demon.” You get the usual stuff about the heroes not wanting to actually hurt them, since they’re innocent people who have been transformed by magic, but the captives have all the powers of their costumes and none of the usual compunctions. In the end, though, it’s Jimmy and the Twins who finally get the drop on Faust, with Zan turning into an ice skeleton and freaking the villain out with a Grim Reaper routine long enough for Jimmy to get in and deliver a knockout punch.
I’m always amused by these old Super Friends comics. At the time these were being published, continuity was a fast and loose game, and even though DC Comics had pioneered the concept of a multiverse, it wasn’t something they used as vigorously as they do today. The result were Super Friends stories that tried to pretend they were part of the mainstream DC Universe with various references and callbacks that were probably wasted on the younger readers that the comic was aimed at. For instance, when the League is trying to come up with a plan to fight Faust, Superman suggests calling up the only Justice League member with magical powers, Zatanna, but unfortunately she’s busy on her own case. Jimmy’s werewolfism, as well as the cure (a kiss from a pretty girl) is a callback to one of the classic Silver Age Jimmy Olsen comics (in fact, I’m pretty sure I wrote about that one LAST Halloween), and there’s even a casual reference to the fact that Jimmy learned Batman’s secret identity on a previous adventure, which is a story I’ve never read or even heard of before, so I GOTTA find that one.
At the same time, the stories are light and simplistic, even compared to the DC Comics of the 1970s. They’re not making this comic for older kids, they’re trying to hook the younger ones. Those links are a neat way to do it, although a few footnotes indicating which issues they’re referencing would be nice.
As was often the case with Super Friends, the ending comes pretty abruptly and without much fanfare. Zan scares Faust, Jimmy punches his lights out, and as soon as he hits the floor the spell is broken and the people trapped in their costumes are set free. There’s also a quick beat at the end where the (unnamed) girls who came to the party with Bruce and Dick ask where they heck they’ve gotten to and the “real” Batman casually tells them that their dates have been placed out of harm’s way. It’s astonishing how often people in old comic books fell for that excuse.
It’s a fun little story, though, and I enjoyed reading it. With one Wednesday left until Halloween, though, I want to find something spookier. Hit me in the comments, guys – what’s the scariest Superman story you know?
Blake M. Petit is a writer, teacher, and dad from Ama, Louisiana. His most recent writing project is the superhero adventure series Other People’s Heroes: Little Stars, volume one of which is now available on Amazon. Don’t forget, you can check out earlier blogs in the Year of Superman/Superman Stuff Archive! Got a request for a future “Superman Stuff”? Drop it in the comments!
