 |
|
February - March 1959 |
"SOS - Calling the Challengers - Your assistance needed at once..." This "startling world-ringing message" reaches the ears of the Challengers. "Crack jet pilot... champion wrestler... daredevil acrobat... expert skindiver." They rush to longitude 47, latitude 60. And spot a sinking vessel and floundering passengers. The guys grab life preservers and jump in. "We'll bind them together and make a safety ring for the victims to cling to!" |
They hit the water - and the vessel and people vanish! Then a sudden shaft of light hits them! "We've been tricked by a mirage, men!" The Challengers are whisked into
the sky on the light beam, then into space! "We-we're
in zero gravity! This was a trap!" yells Rocky.
Red counters, "But WHERE are we being drawn?" |
 (Art from the cover of the Challenger's Super DC Giant, which reprinted this story.) The guys awaken "caged like animals!" (And their guns are gone.) Aliens like blue gophers gloat. "I told you these four most powerful Earthlings would answer our trick call for help. They are honor-bound to help all those in distress." (As you'll learn, buddy.) |
The Challs are "human animals who will soon perform in our stupendous Space Circus!" Rocky growls, "Nobody can make me perform in your crazy circus!" The alien's voice comes from a translator high in their cage. "We shall see about that!" The next morning, the Challengers are prodded down a chute like cattle. A crowd roars. The ringmaster crows, "The greatest team in all the universe will display their talents!" |
The floor slides back. The Challs are catapulted into a tank with "Quadro, the Four-Finned Demon!" Quadro is a huge seal-like monster with hoop fins. The guys get knocked around by "fins that would fell an elephant!" Prof reckons the ringmaster doesn't want them killed, or else they can't perform. Wracking his brain, Prof offers a plan. "Grab that fin and pull towards me!" Coordinating a watery attack, the Challs loop Quadro's own fins around its limbs. It's helpless and the Challs are triumphant. The alien audience goes wild. |
So do the circus owner and Tartan, the Ringmaster. They'll tour the galaxy with the Challengers as stars! In their pen, the guys realize they're in a giant rocket ship - space circus train. |
 |
A worker comes out of a power room. Prof yells to pull off their belts. "That's an ion propulsion tube! Short-circuit it and they'll have to glide to the next asteroid!" Red adds, "And that may give us a chance to escape!" Red tosses a rope of belts over a giant vacuum tube and wrenches it loose. "Like a great wounded bird, the rocket staggers in mid-space..." The forced landing cracks the Challengers' cell and they crawl free... "Oh, no!" |
Tartan the Ringmaster howls with laughter. The Challs' sabotage set them down on the circus's first stop, The Meteor Arena. Ace carps, "Ouch! What timing!" Prodded down the chute, the Challengers watch the next act. Round men are shot from a giant slingshot. Green winged men wear baskets to catch them. "It's like a giant game of pitch and catch!" The flying men wear weights to make it harder. "They must be captives as we are!" When a round man bounces nearby, Ace whispers, "Tell me if your people perform of their own free will!" No, it's do or die. Quickly Ace whispers a plan. The round man tells a flying man. |
Comes the Challengers' turn. The chute pops open. "Split up!" Ace yells. "Prof, Rocky, seize those slings!" Ace and Red slam guards and grab lances. "Fool! The arena has a hundred guards!" They unchain the flying men. "We are with you, Earthlings!" Rocky dumps guards off the slings. "We're taking over, buster!" As guards raise guns, round men jump into the slings. Rocky cranks a lever. "All for one and one for all!" "Operation Escape" roars. Round men cannon into gopher-guards. Prof calls up the flying men. "We are ready, Earthman!" Wide green wings knock down more troops. |
 |
Now's the Challengers' turn. "Yahoo!" yells Rocky. "A solid wall of Challenger flesh hits the troops guarding the exit." Their plan: "Got to keep the exit open until every man escapes!" The Challengers battle furiously, giving the round men and flying men a chance to escape. Reluctant to leave their brave rescuers, the aliens bolt. The Challs retreat and break for the circus train. Ace can pilot. Scorching blasts sizzle as the guys run. As they zoom off in the heavy circus train, pursuit rockets roar around them. "They can cut us to ribbons in a space battle!" But Prof spots an asteroid below. |
The Challs land. The asteroid is made of crystal gems. They'll make a last stand. "But we've freed some of the captives of the space circus. And we can do down fighting!" "By thunder!" Rocky would love to get his hands on that ringmaster. He punches a boulder - and it sails away! Prof figures it out, and hoists a giant boulder. The asteroid atmosphere gives them super-strength! |
"Oh, no! We're going to attack!" yells Prof. "Grab your weapons, men!" The Challengers pitch crystals big as Volkswagens at the bad guys. "They're throwing the giant stones of color!" "But that's impossible!" The villains retreat toward their rockets. "Don't let them take off!" yells Prof. "They'll bomb us from above!" |
 Rocky picks up a crystal like a tabletop. "This should do the trick!" He slings the stone as if skipping it across a pond. The crystal sheers through the pursuit rockets. |
(Jack Kirby got to use the idea again in 1961, in Marvel's TALES OF SUSPENSE 23. A teenager stumbles into a 2D world, then a field of crystals. Needing a weapon, he - well, you can see.)  |
The heroes nail the Ringmaster and drag him before the alien audience, who are shocked to learn the circus managers are criminals. The leader assures they'll be placed under space arrest. And the Challs will be returned home. Ace grins. "That'll be one flight it'll be a pleasure to make!" |
|
High over the Pacific Ocean, a
plane is lashed by a wicked storm as it runs low on fuel.
"Quite a predicament for June Robbins, unofficial fifth
member of that intrepid group." June can only guess
her position as she radios in. Wait. Although there
should be no islands for hundreds of miles, she sees a light
and will try a forced landing.  "As she lights it, the fumes assail her nostrils." |
Hundreds of miles away in some
nondescript radio room (the Challengers don't yet own a mountain),
the boys pin down June's last position. "Let's get
started!" (Since this is the Pacific, are we in some outpost of Shangri-La?) "Let's find out if the inhabitants are friendly!" |
 |
"Before they can take a step," they get their answer. The visitors are mobbed by men in colorful robes. Rocky judo-tosses a man. "This isn't helping us find June! Let's break clear of these characters and take off!" Up a hillside, they meet June and some creep in green. Is June waving them back? Nope. One gesture and the hillside opens and releases a deluge! The guys are washed away in the flood. Red and Rocky grab a log, but Ace and Prof are gone! Ace and Prof are farther downstream, bounced off rocks. "Looks like we're going to have a real bang-up party!" They worry about their pals. Well they might. June gestures again, and the water vanishes! Red and Rocky are "hung high and dry" on a log wedged in a cleft. "Those are not just parlor tricks... It's magic!" And June's not done. Still shadowed by the creep, June gestures, and Rocky and Red turn to stone! (As seen on the cover.) Prof and Ace saw that, but hang back. "We'd only get the same treatment." They trail along. |
Red and Rocky are un-stoned and thrown behind bars (for the second time this issue). They confront the crook. "Charles Agar, a criminal wanted back in the United States." Shipwrecked, he "made a great impression" with his wristwatch and cigarette lighter as a sorceror. Now he's second-banana to the shaman, Shong, and plans to become "indescribably wealthy". A local legend told of an ancient
sorceress with a lamp that bestowed magic powers. June found
it, and Agar found June. When the fumes start to wear off, he
makes June breathes more. Red hollers, "If I could
only get my hands on you!" (Interesting that they wear guns they never use them.) |
A shaman, Shong, enters in a wild Kirby horned hat. He notes two intruders are still loose in the city under cover of darkness. "If your sorceress could turn darkness into daylight, they would easily be found." The crook agrees. But June starts to recover her mind. "Wh-where am I?" The fumes are wearing off!  |
Agar opens a hidden compartment in a statue for the lamp - and Ace and Prof crash through the skylight! Ace decks Agar and grabs the lamp. Prof springs Rocky and Red. As guards swarm, the boys play keep-away with the lamp. Prof grabs it and June and yells, "Red, the lights! Get 'em!" Red flips a tapestry on the oil lamps and the room goes black. Dashing outside, with Agar over Ace's shoulder, the guys finds the guards hard on their heels. Rocky pauses. "We haven't time to explain we're not their enemies! Let me have all the bullets from your pistol clips, fellows!" (He's holding a revolver, not an automatic, but hey.) Ace takes over, addressing the guards with June beside him. "The sorceress is on our side now! Don't take another step - or you'll be in great danger!" June gestures and the ground explodes. The guards run. |
 |
Ace just had to dump the powder and light a fuse. "They thought June surely caused the explosion!" As their jet wings over the ocean, the guys figure Agar will never find the island again after he gets out of jail. And Prof tosses the lamp into the drink. "Well, fellows, this ends one adventure! Where will we find the next one?" |
Comments Typical early Kirby adventures, fast and furious and not all that well thought out, but they are comics, after all. The "Space Circus" treats us to some wild graphics in unfamiliar places, such as a circus train - rocket. The "Sorceress" gives us gorgeous settings in exotic climes. Toss in the heroes' pluck and teamwork, some fistfights and pyrotechnics, and you're set. But how did Prof resist keeping the lamp to study? Again we see here that the Challengers are not superheroes but adventurers. Their exploits harken not to earlier super comics, but rather to old movie serials and 1950s science fiction movies. |
"Captives of the Space Circus" was reprinted in the Challenger's only Super Giant DC Special Annual, or whatever it was called. "Sorceress" was reprinted in the COTU 78. According to www.confluence.org, longitude 47 and latitude 60 are on land eight miles east of Burkovskiy Pochinok in Russia, so somebody's coordinates are off. In a Public Service page, on a dreary rainy day, a kid comes into a house to find his friends busy as beavers. Two boys have a book that explains how a "remote control gimmick" works. Girls make a costume for a play from a book. "Real cool, huh?" Another girl spins records. Where'd you pick up all this stuff? At the library! "With this little borrower's card, you can have all the advantages of the library and all the comforts of home!" And public libraries are an American invention, let's remind ourselves. |
 |
 |