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June's Appearances and History
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June's Appearances and History
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June is flying over the Pacific, Amelia Earhart-style, when she runs low on fuel and force-lands on an uncharted island. (Her mission in unstated. Maybe she's just flying back from South America.) Brain-fogged by a magic lamp, June is hailed as a wizard by a scheming criminal and medieval-type people in a lost valley. The Challs follow her last radio report and rescue her. (COTU 6, "The Sorceress of Hidden Valley".)
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June is visiting Challenger Mountain, drinking coffee, having stayed the night in her her own quarters. The news reports a man walked through the walls of a bank as the walls glowed green. June insists on going along because she's an "honorary Challenger". She gets shrunk along with the guys, but they get better. (COTU 7, "Isle of No Return.") June gets a call from a cousin named Marie, who's inherited a castle in Mordania. A scroll claims that under the castle are three mysterious boxes with strange powers. A clown named Drabny pops in to steals the inventions and control the future, but he gets aced. For this adventure, June and Marie wear fetching purple jumpsuits, obviously taken from June's closet. (COTU 8, "The Man Who Stole the Future.") This is the only member of June's family we ever see, though a deceased uncle is mentioned later. Same as the Challengers (except Red's brother Tino), we know nothing of June's background and family. |
One fan has speculated that Lady Blackhawk, Zinda Blake, is June's sister. Zinda started running with the Blackhawks in 1959. June met the Challengers in 1958, so the times match up. But why are the names different? Can we make any comparisons other than physical resemblance? Not yet, anyway.
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June flies off for another round of archaeology and primate intelligence. June is studying Roman relics when they were stolen. She calls her buds, but a villain named Dekkar uses a machine to steal the Challengers' memories. June must show her amnesiac friends how to defeat their foe. (COTU 9, "The Men Who Lost Their Memories.")
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June is on her way to visit a Dr. Manning, who was researching how to communicate with animals via computer. She finds the scientist is transformed into a giant, super-strong, rampaging caveman. The Challengers subdue him. (COTU 10, "The Cave-Man Beast.") June is part of a team investigating a Bronze Age site in the Caribbean (Bronze Age Mediterraneans would a real anomaly) when aliens arrive. The Challengers are transported to an extradimensional world to help its inhabitants overthrow the conquering Zarxes, who wish to enslave Earth as well. (COTU 11, "The Creatures From the Forbidden World.") June works in an animal
testing lab in the jungle. She's actually
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June helps decipher a book discovered in the archives of Rhodes that points to Colchis and the Golden Fleece. The Challengers accompany to the island. But when Rocky discovers and dons the fleece, it turns him malevolent with strange powers. (COTU 13, "The Creatures From the Past.") June poses as a mermaid to lure Rocky close! |
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It's clear June "digs" archaeology. But what is she searching for? Many early cultures dabbled in magic as part of the search for knowledge. Many cultures still dabble today. Jewish Kabalists believe you can study numerology and semantics and come to a "scientific" knowledge of God. Many scientists get sidetracked into the nature of magic. Carl Jung studied psychology, then slid into religion, and finally thought he was a reincarnated lion-god. Superman himself once explored the roots of magic to determine why it affected him. Does June believe in computer magic? Many computer developers refer to "computer magic" or "Internet magic". Certainly Ultivac's awakening smacks of magic. |
For that matter, did June help Doc Magnus develop the Metal Men's responsometers? Doc was primarily a metallurgist. Did June contribute to the sentience of the Metal Men, another more-or-less lucky accident? Four times June works with animal testing. With a scientist trying to communicate through computers with primates. With a monkey that's gained super-powers. With a scientist trying to grow larger primates. With space-microbes that grow super-large (and June too). |
Whatever her motives, June seems to be searching for knowledge and/or magic. Obviously she's using computers to decrypt ancient languages. Would that help her map, say, an overall pattern of human history, the development of ancient civilizations? Is June trying to crack the secret of human evolution and the rise of civilization? Conquering such a "challenge" would be Nobel Prize stuff for sure. For a home base, June
originally worked in Washington, DC. Later (by COTU 2),
she transfers to Boulder, CO to be near Challenger Mountain.
She likely takes a job at one of the universities or a
government facility. More likely a university, since |
June makes more scattershot appearances. June is visiting Challenger Mountain when an alien ray whisks her away with the rest of the Challengers. They're teleported to an alien world harried by a giant beast running amuck. (COTU 14, "Captives of the Alien Beasts.") Possibly at a university lab, June experiments with newly-discovered microbes brought back from a balloon that went 75 miles high. "I want to check their reaction to lower atmospheric elements." An explosion turns June and a micro-monster into giants, making life dangerous for the Challengers. (COTU 15, "The Lady Giant and the Beast.") |
June flies toward Challenger Mountain when she disappears off the radar. The guys search the desert where she crashed. They find her dazed and wandering toward a mirage that's real! She stumbles into a mirage-world with a medieval culture, and the Challengers follow to rescue her. (COTU 16, "Prisoners of the Mirage World.")
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June is visiting the boys and shopping with Ace in town. She covets opals, her favorite gem. An ancient genie pops up who is inexplicably afraid of June. (COTU 17, "The Genie Who Feared June.")
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June inherits a tropical island from an uncle. They fly to check it out, ignoring fishermen's tales of strange happenings. Along they way they rescue a strange pet from an alien space capsule. The weird "Cosmo" stops crooks using the island as a weapons depot. (COTU 18, "The Menace of Mystery Island.")
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June is on an archaeological dig in the Middle East, apparently alone, because the Challs help her dig. A criminal steals a sorceror's stone and control two monsters who brawl with the Challengers. (COTU 19, "The Beasts From the Fabulous Gem.") June visits Challenger Mountain to help Prof and Ace monitor the orbit of a space capsule. It veers off-course and lands on the West Coast of Africa, where they go. The crashed astronaut's irradiated spacesuit causes incredible mutations. (COTU 20, "The Cosmic-Powered Creatures.") June sends a coded message, and the Challs respond. In a forest in the mountains they meet an alien woman (June in disguise). She agreed to lure the boys and fool them into thinking there was danger so they'd act natural for a semi-documentary on the COTU. But Ace recognized the perfume they gave June for her birthday. The movies goes awry when criminals hijack the science-fiction equipment. (COTU 21, "The Weird World That Didn't Exist.") |
June, the "honorary girl member", helps test and train Cosmo to make him a crime-fighter. A criminal mystic, Zardoc, gains mind-over-matter powers from a strange meteorite, but Cosmo evens the odds. (COTU 21, "The Challengers' Space-Pet Ally.") June visits the boys, shopping in town for groceries, when they and some time-lost warriors are captured by an alien who kidnaps people from different times for his private zoo. (COTU 22, "The Thing In Challenger Mountain.")
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More - or less - of June continues... |
