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October - November 1963 |
A storm rages off Cape Cod as the Challengers chase a buoy. "It's that important?" asks Rocky. Yep, says Prof. The buoy marked a recording device that's been picking up strange sounds, and the oceanographic institute wants it investigated. But the cable snaps and the buoy washes ashore on Nantucket Island. Ace tries to phone in their location, but the storm wrecked the lines. Prof and Rocky dive to find the recorder on the sea bottom. What they find is the source of the strange sounds is a Nazi sub. "It must've drifted here with the current... It's the biggest Nazi sub I've seen, and a special one!" All four Challs - "whose business is mystery - the inexplicable - the unknown" - pry open the airlock.  The sub is "as cold as a icebox", for a reason. It holds Nazis in cold sleep! Even though the war ended 20 years ago! |
Prof throws a lever that shuts off the whirring noise - but awakens the Nazis, who immediately push on with their mission. (We don't know exactly what they say, because they speak only German with no translation.) Nazi soldiers get the drop on the stunned Challs. Rocky, "The joint's loaded with 'em!" Nazi frogmen prime a PT boat. Ashore, they set up a radio-like box (a super-bomb) on a tripod. As the frogmen return, the Challs make their move. Ace yells, "Grab yourself some "firecrackers" and let's get out of here!" Fists fly. Reaching shore, Prof "the lingo expert" translates what he's heard. The crew was sent on a special mission just before Germany surrendered. They were to wait six months in cold sleep, then blow up the US Eastern seaboard. Obviously something went wrong. Why not tell them the war's over? Prof, "They wouldn't care! They're fanatics!" The super-bomb on shore is timed to go off in a hour. Since they can't phone for help, the Challs have to deactivate it. Ace adds, "IF we have time! The sub's surfacing. Dig in! They'll be throwing everything AND the kitchen sink at us!" |
So three Challs try to hold "Beachhead, U.S.A" as Prof tries to dismantle a bomb.  Germans steamroll toward the beach while others try to flank the Challs. Rocky, "It's goodbye one beachhead... unless... Come and get me, you leftover swastikas!" Firing wildly, Rocky charges the surf and grapples Nazis hand-to-hand. He's captured and taken aboard the sub. Ace and Red fire madly to keep the Nazis back, but can't hold them much longer. And the bomb-deactivation? Prof reports, "It's like trying to fix a watch on a bronco!" |
But Rocky has a plan aboard the sub. Belly-slamming his guard, he lowers a hatch and seizes the PT boat. The boat roars. The Challs see Rocky escape. Is he going for help? If so, "he'll never make it! We'll be goners by then!" A new burst of fire pins the Challs, but at least Rocky got away.  Got away? Not at all... Rocky spins the boat and, braving withering fire, charges the sub! At the last split-second he dives, and sub explodes. With the sub gone, the soldiers are "kaput". And Prof's bomb? "This baby's as harmless as a wet firecracker!" Rocky laughs. "Did you guys think about this? We can tell our kids we fought the last battle of World War II - almost 20 years after it ended!" |
"Multi-Woman, Queen of Disaster!" |
Six weeks have passed since Multi-Man's "shocking jailbreak", but there's been no sign of him. Rocky says, "I'm wonderin', what's that human chameleon up to?" But there's nothing they can do until they get a lead. "He can't have walked off the surface of the Earth." "But BELOW the Earth's surface, in a cave beneath the Pacific shore line... MM puts the finishing welds on a rocket begun before his incarceration. "This is quite a "firecracker"! And when it goes off, it'll be Multi-Man's "shot heard 'round the world". A week later, TV transmissions everywhere are disrupted by MM's runty puss. He's launched a rocket, gloats the villain, with a raygun of his own invention. People in America, Japan, and Paris watch as the ray obliterates an iron asteroid. MM could just as easily destroy buildings, bridges, and railroads, unless his demands are met. MM's demands? His own country, recognition as a major world power! The UN debates, some refusing blackmail, some willing to negotiate. |
The Challengers imagine a political travesty where MM's "flag will fly beside all the (United) nations" and MM will "print his own stamps and money and passports for the world's top hoodlums!" (Note the country-to-be is Multi-Manland.) But Prof uses the computer to track MM's signal "straight to his doorstep!"  |
Meanwhile, MM is - of all things - "a lonely man. I needed a queen to share my throne... but there isn't a woman alive fit to rule beside me... I had to create my own queen." Says he, painting a blue eyeball the size of a melon. Soon MM's queen is ready, and able to change her form just as he can. He drinks his liquid light solution to "change my body to a form worthy of my great mentality. Then my queen shall see me as I truly should be." (He's not only lonely, but bonky.) The Challs arrive on the rocky coast. MM should be 25 feet offshore. But in a submarine? Or - "BR-O-THE-ER ! LOOK!"  The NEW Multi-Man is not only brilliant, but "handsome... with the strength of 50 men!" |
Valiant Prof rushes to hurl the liquid-light antidote in MM's face (for like the 50th time), but gets slaps down. Ace scoops up the vial, but MM runs. The Challs chase him into a ravine - or so they think. The towering figure in the green cape turns out to be - "A gal! But what a gal!" Imagine a super-deep forbidding female bass voice. "So at last I meet the famous Challengers! I am Multi-Man's queen!" The Challs naturally assume "he fed some female the formula he uses to change himself. Well, this antidote will work on her too!" Ace dashes the vial in her face. She laughs. She's not human, "but a mechanical marvel!" |
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MM really knows how to build. Sprouting wings with a clang and buzz, M-Woman takes to the skies assisted by shoulder-blade jets. Prof has contacted the Navy, who open fire. Shot down, M-Woman morphs into a fish. (You have to wonder, though... Multi-Man is like Lex Luthor, knocking himself out to make super-gadgets to defeat Superman. If he's so clever, why not just build legitimate wonder machines and make a fortune, and buy what he wants? Or is being evil just too much fun?) MM uses his giant strength to rip up a power pole and menace the Challs with high voltage. For about half a page. Prof has a SECOND vial of the antidote. MM catches a faceful and shrinks back to a big-domed pipsqueak. M-Woman sprouts a mole-like digger appendage and drills into their midst to rescue her man. Of all things, Multi-Woman is disgusted! "Why did you become so small and ugly?" And she walks off. The Challs laugh. "You succeeded too well! You built a mechanical being who thought and behaved like a human female..." |
Things get downright weird. MM springs a smoke bomb and escapes - but is soon shouting for help! M-Woman has turned on Multi-Man! "She's going to kill me!" Prof rocks the giant woman with a mini-concussion bomb. MM pulls out a radio transmitter. He built an explosive device inside her. "That signal will blow her sky-high!" Oops, she already removed that charge in his lab. M-Woman rages. "You'll die for that!" Fiery-tempered and fiery-bodied, she flings fireballs after all the guys - another self-built addition MM never imagined!  Then heads for the city. Ace has an idea, but needs MM's help. "Yes, yes! I'll do anything to prevent that she-devil from killing me!" |
Shortly, the Challs return with "the strangest bait anybody ever used." The Challs dump it and run. Rampaging, M-Woman spots a diamond necklace. She dons it -  - Red throws a switch on an ultrasonic device - - and M-Woman begins shaking to pieces. In seconds, she vibrates so wildly that she explodes in deadly fragments. The diamond was a trap. After all, what girl can resist diamonds? Multi-Man has "taken a powder". The Challs blow up his cave and his iron disintegrator. "But his evil brain lives on - to strike again!" |
Comments As they say, any comic characters who last long enough eventually fight Nazis. Glad to see the Challs can show the Krauts why we won the war. And it's refreshing to see Germans speaking German with no translation, a rarity in comics, perhaps a first. As for fighting "the last battle of World War II", the Challs do that AGAIN in "Time Bomb on Holdout Island" (COTU 38). And it's fun to see Multi-Man, who's always an obnoxious little snot, get his comeuppance and beg to be rescued by the Challs. Yet you KNOW he's already figuring how he'll modify the programming for Multi-Woman II, who indeed shows up in COTU 45. Note the international flavor on the MM story. We see average people in the USA, Japan, and France react to bad news. The UN debates, complete with a delegate in a burnoose. This was JFK's America still, and the idea of tackling world-wide problems together was prevalent and popular. Oh, for simpler times. |