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October - November 1964 |
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Our story opens with shots of Challenger Mountain, where Ace, Prof, and Red build and test new gadgets. Rocky "improves on his own specialty", weight-lifting. Some distance away, an "odd flying object" swoops onto a highballing express. The "brazen monstrosity" snatches a baggage car and flies away. "The Challengers thunder in pursuit."  They find the broken box car near the coast. It must have been dropped from the sky. The gold shipment is gone. |
Just then a meteorite(?) plunges into the sea. They're unsure what it was, but "it must've gone out of commission and flipped into the drink." The Challs approach a salvage crew and borrow a diving bell. Down they sink. And spot the weird red craft. Which is NOT wrecked - and "heading to ram us! It'll scatter us over the bottom like broken sea shells!" Prof stabs a button. The bell releases an inky cloud, a precaution against undersea monsters. They're hauled to safety. Rocky asks, "How we gonna fight something like that? Punch it in the nose?" Ace replies, "In a sense, yes. Those special projects are our best bet." They're not finished, so the Challs work all night. Ace hasn't had a chance for a dry run. Nor Prof a wet run. And Red says, "I feel like a pinball machine in this electronic get-up!" |
Radar spots their target. Their plane "rocket firing mechanism" is dismantled. It's up to Ace's untested jet pack. "You know what paratroopers say if a chute fails, 'Go back and get a new one!' I'll either be a live eagle or a dead duck!" Ace zooms across the city. The "astonishing airborne marauder" is hovering and tearing into a bank. It steals the entire vault. Police bullets bounce off. Ace follows and radios, "to give 'em the score so far... Flyboy to Home Plate!" He sticks to the villains' tail to find their hideout. The other three Challs scramble to the jet. |
The thugs flying the marauder spot the "guy in a flying suit." One chuckles, "I'll give him a hot foot! I mean, a hot wing!" Ace sticks too close. A nozzle sprays him with flame! "One jet's gone... the other one's got a bad case of the wheezes..." Flying, falling, Ace makes a "pancake landing" on a mountain ledge.  Red's turn. "This is my sideshow, buddy!" As the "whoozis" circles back, it fires more flame. Red counters with CO2 foam from his suit! The villains swoop low to scoop our heroes off the ledge. Red, the electrical engineer, splashes them with lightning bolts! The weird jet sheers off. Just in time. Red's power unit is dead. |
In their own jet, Prof and Rocky saw the thing dive into the drink again. Ace and Red can descend the mountain alone, so the boys fly after it. Later, aboard a salvage ship, Prof dons his purple-white diving suit. As he descends, the suit inflates to match the pressure. "I'm perfectly comfortable at pressures that would kill a skin diver. Still no sign of -" Like a leviathan, the red monster bears down on Prof! He can't outrace it, can't outmaneuver it - and swinging wide, gets fouled in old cables on a wreck. Brave Rocky, in diver's gear, jumps overboard. "I'm going downstairs to help him!" He struggles to free Prof, but the "amphib" rushes. Rocky loops and lands atop. With his bare hands he tears up an access panel. The thugs find "Water's pourin' in! We have to surface!" |
The craft breaches. The thugs surrender. "We know when we're licked!" The ship's captain received a report over the radio. The "thing" is an air-sea rescue craft made in Switzerland. One thug worked in the manufacturing plant and hijacked the craft. He told where the loot is, so it'll be recovered - thanks to the Challengers! Back at the mountain, the guys hang up their suits. They need repairs and adjustments, but "Rocky's are built in!" Rocky adds, "Don't forget I'm kinda super in the brain department too!" |
"The Spy In Challenger Cave" |
Multi-Man is back, with "Bees with the sting of death. Fireflies brighter than the sun. Caterpillars that weave steel cocoons. And most dangerous of all, the sinister spider destined to become The Spy in Challenger Cave." High over a great city, the Challengers monitor the police band in their helicopter. Mr. Voodoo is entering Ditmark's Art Gallery. Mr. Voodoo threatens the guys with a .45 pistol. Rocky hurls a stone bust. "Let's see how he hits right-handed pitchin'. Yeah, bats .1000."  Voodoo pulls a flare gun. The red glare blinds the Challs and Voodoo escapes. "Well, no use hanging around here." The Challs board their copter "unaware of a weird follower." A robot spider skitters CLICK-CLICK up the ramp. Red asks if Rocky said anything. "Nope! You oughta get your ears fixed, Red! Then have 'em work on the rest of your face!" |
The helicopter returns to their mountain hideout, where a camouflaged stone door slides open. Prof admonishes Red and Rocky to stop the horseplay. "Red and I are in the middle of the most important experiment ever conducted!" Rocky grins, "Sure, Great Egghead and Noble Master!" "Operation M-E is vital to us!" says Ace. "If it works, we've got a tremendous tool and weapon that criminals - even governments - would break their backs to get!" |
As the Challs work, the strange intruder does too. Its whirring camera films the interior of the mountain.  The spy avoids electric eyes in doorways, but then pulls over a lamp. CLANG CLANG! goes the alarm. False alarm? No. There goes a miniature rocket craft whooshing out of the mountain! Prof orders them to work "like an eagle with its tail on fire" to finish Project M-E before their enemy does. |
The mysterious Mr. Voodoo receives his spy and pulls out the microfilm reel. Now he'll learn a secret he's sought for years: "The precise location of the Challenger's hideout!" Giant robot insects flit and crawl around this bizarre hideout as Mr. Voodoo shucks his costume. It's Multi-Man, the big-headed dwarf, in a sham suit with the arms and legs controlled by cranks. (Recall MM is a master of robotics. He built Multi-Woman twice.) MM runs the tape, but heavy cloud cover hides the location of the mountain. "Bah!" The interior pictures are clear. |
Slowly MM builds a composite map of the Chall's HQ. The first ever diagram!  |
What is Project M-E? No idea. MM tries a ruse. Still monitoring the police band, the Challs hear Mr. Voodoo is entering the Dudley Tapestry Galleries. Shortly, the Challs rush in the gallery to find, "Hey! This joint's emptier than a school five seconds after recess!" Multi-Man watches from across the street. "The poor fish swallowed my bait!" MM drinks his "magic potion" (liquid light). Morphing into a golden grasshopper(?) with MM's head, he's "King of the Robot-Insects! Follow me, bug brothers!" The swarm enters the Challs' copter. Ace and Rocky don't notice - Wake up, guys! - and return to the mountain. |
Prof is ready to test "Project M-E: matter into energy! Could we turn living matter into energy, record it on tape, and reverse the process?" Prof demonstrates. First tested in an African village, they play a tape, and miraculously, a living fly materializes! Next Prof materializes another recording: a full-sized Indian totem pole! MM pounces with his robot insects. "So that's your secret!" Ace roars, "Multi-Man was Mr. Voodoo!" |
Rocky grabs the totem pole and swats MM's robot army, crushing giant bugs into wires and chips.  |
But flying caterpillars cocoon Rocky in pure steel threads. Fireflies blind them. More bugs weave a super-sticky web, and all four Challs are snared! (As on the cover.) Prof, desperate to try something, kicks out. He dumps the M-E Machine. The reanimated fly buzzes loose. MM sneers, until Prof announces it's a deadly African tse-tse fly, carrier of sleeping sickness. MM panics. "Get it away!" Without commands, the robot insects fly wild, crashing into one another. Prof pulls free of the webbing. Grabbing the machine, he plays back a giant condor who snatches MM from the sky. The boys will blindfold him before hauling him to the cops. Oh, and the fly? It wasn't a tse-tse fly, just a common house fly. Rocky cracks, "And it drove you bugs!" |
Comments Super-powers, really super-gadgets, heralds the coming of the Chall superization in issue 43, when they get new uniforms and supervillains. As the DC Comics Encyclopedia notes, "The Challengers bridged the gap between the Mystery Men of the Golden Age and the superheroes of the Silver Age". Here they set foot on that bridge. The Multi-Man story is plain weird. Why does MM use a fake costume and gun when he could drink his potion and have real powers? Just to get a robot spy on their copter? And why should he be so terrified of a tse-tse fly? Why did Prof test the M-E Machine in Africa, and only grab a fly, not an elephant, say? Then skip to the Andes for a condor? Then Washington State for a totem pole, which isn't even alive? We got a lot of colorful imagery but one chaotic story. Still, it's unlikely ten-year-olds were so critical. |
You could subscribe in those days. 10 issues for $1. Sound cheap? My allowance, I recall, was 25 cents a week! Note you could get Rip Hunter, Doom Patrol, and Sea Devils for the same price. The sub forms always offered similar comics: war with war, Batman with World's Finest, and so on. Rip Hunter and the Sea Devils were also non-super, and all four comics are teams. See how Ace is pitching the sale directly?  |