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April - May 1969 |
"Fear peers of out Tino's red-rimmed eye like a croaking vulture as he's confronted by the Challengers..." Tino Manarry, Red's kid brother, is terrified to go to sleep. Killers with knives haunt his dreams. "They'll get me for sure!" Red promises to protect him, and Tino nods off. Rocky says, "The kid's just suffering from an overactive imagination." Ace agrees, "I get that way after pickles and ice cream." But Tino's arm bleeds while the Challengers watch. "It's no phony! It's for real!" Red rouses Tino before something worse happens. |
The next night, in the lab, Prof hooks Tino up to a machine "that translates electrical impulses from a sleeper's brain into actual pictures" on a big screen. Wired up, Tino drops off. Images appear. Skeletal figures corner Tino on a rooftop (as seen on the cover). Worried, Red wakes his brother and the images fizzle. What to do? Always experimenting in ways to confront the unknown, Prof thinks he can "tune in a human's brain waves to sleeper's electrical impulses - making it possible to participate in the sleeper's dream." Wrung out by lack of sleep, Tino panics. What if it doesn't work? Red says, "We've got to risk it! You can't fight off sleep forever!" The other Challs agree and strap into chairs. Tino frets. "No matter where I turn, they're after me! Where can I go - except into the grave?" He sleeps - and is chased through a graveyard by skeletons. The Challs go nowhere. "There must be a bug in the apparatus!" Prof slaps Tino awake. Prof will iron out the bugs. "You'll never be safe - unless we stop those finks haunting you." |
Red takes Tino walking into the city. (This would be Boulder, Colorado.) The Challs get a shock. Everyone in the city has haunted dreams! A dazed woman begs for help. "Strange men - with eyes like holes burned in a sack! Skeletons on the prowl!" "City officials take measures to counter the weird events..." People stand dead on their feet drinking free coffee. Movies houses are open and free, showing action-packed gladiator flicks "to keep you on your toes!"  Some people can't take the living death of sleeplessness, and beg to die. Prof gets the machine ready. Tino is resigned to die too. The Challengers tell him, "The whole city is on a sleep-strike! Countless lives are at stake! You're our only chance of trying to stop them!" There's no telling what the dream killers will do if not stopped. |
Strapped in, the Challengers nod off. Prof prays, "Please, don't let me fail again!" Then... "We made it! We're in a dream!" Ace, Rocky, and Red, with Tino, are in glorious black-and-white. Now the good guys chase the skeletons across a roof. They bang heads and jaws. The skeletons jump off the roof - - and run unharmed through the eerie empty dream-streets. Ace yells, "Don't stand there gawking! We've got to find out where they came from!" Rocky says, "Yeah! Maybe the sandman's bag!" The skeletons dive into water. The Challs commandeer a boat and follow. When the skeletons don't surface, they don SCUBA gear and submerge. |
Below, in the black-white dream-sea, tentacles ensnare a nuclear sub. The crew fires torpedoes - which are attracted to the Challs' air tanks! As... Rocky yells, "Am I losing my marbles?" The tentacles belong to a giant amoeba. The skeletons swim into it. "Only one thing it can be - an enormous alien brain conjuring up an attack against human beings through their dreams!" Ace orders, "Take a deep breath - and drop your tanks!" The torpedoes follow the tanks "like metal homing pigeons" - and blow the alien to pieces.  |
"Ace: The Beast in the Bomb!" |
A muffled voice echoes through Endless Caverns. It's Ace calling for help!  |
Red, Rocky, and Prof come running. Ace is trapped in an iron mask - that ticks "like a runaway heartbeat!" Ace yells, "Don't stand there like goggling scarecrows! I'm a human time-bomb! Tear me loose before this infernal machine goes off!"  The Challengers pull. Red says, "Don't lose your cool, Ace!" Rocky adds, "We'll free you - somehow! If we have to break our hands doing it!" |
It was only scant hours ago that the Challengers got a call to search Endless Caverns. (We're not told the anonymous tip.) They split up to search - - and Ace got cracked on the head. A cadaverous man lured the Challengers into a trap like flies. "The city jeered my fantastic inventions! Forced me to flee to this remote mountain town... Now it will explode against them in a way they never dreamed of! And the beauty of the plan is... that the Challengers themselves... will cause their own city to be blasted to rubble." The monstrous genius leaves Ace to be found.... |
Tick tick tick...  |
Now the Challengers pull, "but can't budge the bomb!" Rocky fetches a hammer and chisel. "Sorry, ol' buddy, if we're givin' you an Excedrin headache!" Tick tick tick... Ace panics and throws off his pals. "What do you fellers think you're doing? Fooling around like you had all night?" Ace apologizes, but the guys think the bomb is "doing something to you." They opt to take Ace to Doc Stevens in the city (Boulder, Colorado). "He'll check out any damage, mental or physical!" They rush in their convertible for the city, but wonder if this is the mad genius's plan -to bring the bomb into the city to explode. Ace yells, "We can't take that chance! Dump me somewhere where I won't do any harm! The bottom of the river!" Now the Challengers argue. Endanger thousands of lives? Or hope Doc Stevens can figure how to free Ace? They vote to risk it. Rocky asks, "What if the doc ain't in?" He's told, "Bite your tongue, you big lug!" Doc Stevens examines Ace - and hears a double heartbeat! "Ace's heart is activating the bomb!" Can they stop Ace's heart? |
Quickly the Challs put Ace on ice, desperate to drop him into suspended animation. Doc Stevens listens to his heart. It slows, then can barely be detected. The bomb stops ticking!  Rocky tugs, and the bomb-mask comes free! Red notes, "The weirdie who thought this up was a genius turned sour!" The guys warm Ace up. He wants to return to Endless Caverns, "the scene of the crime." Back in "the Stygian depths", the Challengers tread warily for hours - and find the monster. "Here I am, Challengers! And this time there'll be no escape!" The madman shoots. Ace hurls the bomb-mask. Ricochets tag it - and resume the ticking! "Move, Challs, move!" |
The bomb goes off. Not a giant explosion to level a city, but enough to kill Ace.  Ace muses, "Whoever put the beast in the bomb forgot... that sooner or later.. it has to turn upon him!" |
Comments Bob Kanigher, regular writer for Sgt Rock, delivers another terrific pair of tales long on action, if scanty on logic. If everyone in the city suffers nightmares, why not the Challengers? Still, the story moves so fast, you never notice such glitches. The bomb story zooms by so quickly we never get the villain's name! Jack Sparling's art is also sensational: gritty, wild, bursting off the page. Vastly underrated, Sparling had his own sparkling style perfect for Challenger adventures. |
Neal Adams contributed the cover. On his own website, he shows an alternate sketch with a closeup of Tino's agonized face. Effective, but you can't really see the skeletons on the screen, so Adams changed the angle.  |
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This issue was advertised elsewhere. Other ads show big changes in the DCU. Adam Strange was brought back... |
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