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October - November 1966 |
In keeping with their new superhero role, the Challengers are billed on the cover as the "Greatest Fear-Fighting Team in Comicdom!" (Take that, Fantastic Four!) The story opens in a normal peaceful and serene Mongolian Palace. Peaceful until a few moments ago, that is. BAM! KWHUNK! ZOK! The Challengers battle four Mongolian ogres, BIG suckers called "The Brutals", with their bare hands. (One's shown on the cover.) Frankly, the Challs are not faring well. Axes, fists, slamming a shield on their heads has no effect. Rocky notes, "Keep outa their reach! If these big cats get a PAW on you - I mean, man, like MUR-DER!" One huge goon charges Rocky. The other Challs clip the mammoth with flying dives while Rocky slips behind a huge gong - and BANGS it with a tremendous KLANGG! Incredibly, the thunderous gongs revert The Brutals to simple hillsmen. The vibrations broke the spell. The natives describe a "sinister-looking stranger" who came to their land. It can be only one man - Villo! And he and Brainex must be watching at this very moment. |
Right on the money. In Villo's Villa, Villo rants to Brainex about how the Challengers keep eluding HIS traps.  MY traps, counters Brainex. Details, details. Villo's out to kill the Challs for pure spite, not money or revenge, but they won't cooperate. Villo even has glass cases ready for them in his trophy room - an idea he swiped from Batman, adds Brainex. Bicker bicker bicker... |
For once, Villo thinks. The Challs must have weaknesses, but they always work as a team, which covers up weaknesses. Brainex has a brainstorm: scan their past activities BEFORE they were Challs to spot weaknesses. Brainex immediately scans back to - the Civil War! Too far! They spot Ace in his test-pilot days. His jet engine fails, but Ace ejects in time. Then he fights three muscle-bound morons single-handed. "He's a terror" with no weaknesses. And on his way with his pals. Brainex's detector ray shows the Challs arriving in the Galloping Gizmo. The Challs race amid Greek? ruins toward Villo's Villa, but get ray-blasted flat. Their eyes burn from a red glare that announces the coming of - giant versions of the Challengers!  |
The Challs get pounded. They see exploding suns, rainbows, negatives, and more as they're batted around by their evil counterparts. Who then vanish as Villo's Villa zooms away. Except... Ace isn't breathing. He's dead! Rocky feels the worst. "If I only saw it happen - maybe I could've stopped it-" Ace's borrowed time just ran out, it just happened. Rocky announces this is curtains for Villo. No, insists Prof, they need to keep their wits. "Villo mustn't know about Ace." Meanwhile, the Villa hides underwater. The villains review Prof's career, killing sharks, fighting deadly divers, overcoming rapture of the deep. "Impossible," grouses Villo, "the man's made of iron!" |
And on his way, since the Gizmo can fly underwater.  But the Challs aren't thinking clearly because - same as last time - they get ray-blasted as they approach. Note the great way Bob Brown uses depth and space to combine two panels. Ace lies in state in the Gizmo while fish glide overhead. (The Challs are temporarily homeless, living in their jet, since Challenger Mountain blew up in COTU 50.) Juxtaposed against the image of still stately Ace are the Challs getting knocked about like nine pins trying to avenge their pal. Great composition. |
Blacked out, the Challs float. Rocky, the strong one, comes to first. And finds he's twisted in the coils of a two-headed sea serpent! "Not a sign of the other guys - must be hurt - gotta handle this baby all by my lonesome..." Rocky KOs one serpent head and strangles the other, until it begins transforming into something else! Meanwhile, Villo watches the past, where Red Ryan dumps a yeti off a mountain. Brainex notes, "[Red] is a pretty canny combatant! He was a famed mountain climber - and experienced in every hazard! He could cope with any danger and emergency!" No weaknesses there. But Villo's laughing too hard to notice. HE's found the weakness. Outside, Rocky is strangling Prof. He's a "mental dwarf. The depths are scrambling his brain!" Yep, Rocky's succumbed to raptures of the deep (hallucinations). He clobbered Red and almost killed Prof! Prof releases an ink "octopus screen", and they return to the Gizmo. If Rocky felt bad about Ace's death, he's shattered over Red's death, because HE caused it! Prof doesn't hold Rocky responsible, but he does have a plan. It'll require an "Oscar-winning performance". |
Minutes later, Rocky rips off Prof's scuba gear, and Prof drifts away, dead. Rocky then enters the airlock of Villo's Villa. Still groggy, he's helped inside by Villo, who chortles, "This is my BIG day, clod! You're the last of the Challengers! And after I restore your senses so you can fully appreciate how terribly bad I am - I'll end your agony!" Nope. Rocky's handing out agony, walloping Villo into the air and twisting him in a hammerlock. Rocky's act was good, wasn't it? But there's more. Prof brings in Ace and Red, both dead, and lays them out. Prof fiddles with Brainex's dials, remembering some of the "tricky mechanisms" from the last time (COTU 50). Prof converts Brainex's time-probing unit into a time machine! All four Challs, two dead, two alive, bathe in the glow, nervous as cat's on this desperate gamble. |
But Brainex pulls his own stunt. He and Villo planned to transform Rocky into a Brutal - and Brainex does just that to Villo.  |
No good. The Challs wink out, dispatched back through time. Not very far, just back to the Greekish ruins where they rush the Villa. But it winks out too, leaving the Challs with nothing to do. One notes, "But then, everything is kinda screwy all of a sudden!" The bad guys are gone, but Prof now has a Brainex Detector for the next time. Rocky looks around in puzzlement. "Hey! Do you guys keep gettin' this feeling we've been through somethin' - that you can't quite remember?" And a text box adds, "Indeed they can't remember, because when they back-tracked in time, the tragic moments of what had happened were wiped out as if they never happened!" |
Comment This is what comics are all about. Grand adventure, amazing twists, funny lines, non-stop action. Why can't modern writers take a hint from winning formulas? Note how the plot uses elements already seen in just a few pages. Villo is turned into a Brutal at the end, a threat the Challs battled in the first pages. Rocky succumbs to rapture of the deep, which Prof overcame in the flashback just a few pages before. Like a good mystery, clues are scattered throughout a fast-paced story. Things get wild, but the elements aren't chaotic or random, but planted carefully for later use. So the reader doesn't go, "Hunh? Where did THAT come from?" but rather "Oh, yeah! He mentioned that earlier!" To involve the reader in the story is GOOD storytelling. |