Indie Squid Kid

Adventure Comics #227 (August, 1956)

ISK will be taking the rest of the week off as we recover from the Fabulous Festival of Food that is the American Thanksgiving holiday. If you celebrate, I hope it’s not alone on some fishy reality show like our pal Aquaman here.

Also, an octopus wearing a bow tie…not something you see every day.

Happy Thanksgiving!

R13: Colossus! #1 (Cover B, front)

The year is 1939, and a Spanish fishing boat has made a strange catch—a metal man whose glass-domed head contains a floating human skull. The only identifying mark on it is the numeral 13 carved into its forehead. No sooner has this mysterious mechanoid been hauled out on the deck than the ship is attacked by a one-eyed, tentacled monster from the deep. Their new accidental passenger grabs a harpoon (and, later, an anchor) and leaps to the crew’s defense. I won’t reveal how this epic battle ends, but I will remind you that this comics isn’t called “One-Eyed Squid Monster 13.”

Who is Robot 13? Where does he come from? He doesn’t know, but he plans to find out.

page 8

R13: Colossus! is the first publication of Blacklist Studios. It is written by Thomas Hall with art by Daniel Bradford (who also did cover version B. Check out more of his work on deviantART!). Issue #1 hit the comic shelves this summer, and it looks like issue #2 just came out.

Look for it at your local comic book shop or order from www.blackliststudios.com.

(Cover B, back)

This is Tentakil, a Generation 1 Transformer, and member of the Decepticon sub-group the Seacons. Each Seacon was a different monsterous sea creature, and although the resemblance is questionable, ten-armed Tentakil does, in fact, appear to be a squid.

All five Seacons could combine to form the super-robot Piranacon. Tentakil was the left leg.

Pirnacon! (photo from tfwiki.net)

This is a little off-topic, but who the hell thought electric pink and teal were good colors for evil aquatic robots!?

Anyway…when not on leg duty, Tentakil could transform into three different solo modes. In his beast mode, this bipedal squid-bot appears to be wearing a Creature From The Black Lagoon Halloween mask. My figure is missing his accessories, but he would have originally come with two “Slime Laser rifles” that could be head-mounted (mantle-mounted?) in beast mode or carried like regular guns in robot mode. Tentakil also has a third “Targetmaster” mode where he turns into a “50,000 volt lightning rifle.”

Like all G1 Transformers (as well as the Battle Beasts from yesterday’s post), Tentakil was produced by Takama/Hasbro. The figure is stamped 1987, but it appears that the Seacons didn’t hit American toy shelves until 1988. I realize I didn’t include any sense of scale in these photos, but the toy is about 3 3/4″ tall. Even though my brother and I had quite a few Transformers in our time, we never had this or any of the Seacon figures. My future brother-in-law, who was an avid Transformer collector at the time, gave me this Tentakil figure after he found out that I collected cephalopods.

In Japan, the figure was marketed as Tentakil drone for the Super-God Masterforce line, and in 1998 a repainted version of this figure became Scylla, a female Predacon in the Beast Wars line. Another repainted Tentakil was released as part of an Official Transformers Collectors’ Club exclusive Seacon gift set in 2008.

Transformers #47 (December, 1988)

Tentakil (and the entire Seacon crew) debuted in Marvel’s Transformers comic in a four issue story arc called the “Underbase Saga.” As far as I can tell, it has something to do the battle between different Transformer factions to control the master database that contains the collective knowledge of the entire Transformer race. And it’s under water. Or something.

The Seacons, it seems, work for Decepticon mini-cassette Ratbat, and they are trying to acquire the “Underbase” before either the Autobots or the treacherous Starscream does.

According to the Transformers fan site Unicron.com, this is how Tentakil is described in his comic book appearances.

He is undeniably the cruelest, deadliest Seacon. His style is as distinctive as it is lethal.  He showers a potential victim with kindness, offering him help, even complimenting his appearance. And then, once he has gained the confidence of his victim, Tentakil moves in for the kill. In a flash, kindness turns to cruelty. The soft caress of his limbs turns into a deadly, unyielding stranglehold. He seems to take a perverse pleasure in these amiable charades, enjoying them even more than their inevitable, lethal conclusions.

Wow, what an a-hole!

The most famous hero of the pulp era debuted on Street & Smith’s Detective Story Hour radio show in July 1930. Through radio dramas, pulp magazines, and comic books (penned largely by author Walter B. Gibson), The Shadow would become the archetypal masked vigilante.

Street & Smith’s original Shadow Comics ran for 101 issues between 1940 and 1949. During this time, The Shadow encountered everything from mobsters to mad scientists, criminal syndicates to supervillains, and yes, even the occasional sinister cephalopod!

Shadow Comics Vol. 3 #6 (September 1943)

He’s attacking that octopus WITH A LIVE SWORDFISH! That is hard core.

Shadow Comics Vol. 4 #10 (January 1945)

Is this octopus made out of old white men, or does it just have really bad taste in tattoos?

Shadow Comics Vol. 5 #5 (August 1945)

Again, The Shadow tries to teach an octopus that crime does not pay…if by “crime” he means “dating human females” and by “teach” he means “shoot in the face.”

Hellboy: Seed of Destruction #2 (April, 1994)

If there was one threat that Mike Mignola’s paranormal (literally!) investigator is best equipped to fight, it would be…Nazi cyborg gorillas. If there were two things, it would be Nazi cyborg gorillas and giant tentacle monsters! Yes, Hellboy always seems right at home giving the big red smack down to our suckery friends. Granted, these betentacled creatures usually want to eat Hellboy, and the world, in that order, so I guess you really can’t blame him.

The comic depicted above (written and drawn by Mignola, of course) is the second issue of the original Hellboy mini-series. I won’t go into the plot here (Wikipedia has a concise synopsis), but the tentacle monster in question is Sadu-Hem, one of the 369 Ogdru Hem—spawn of the demonic Ogdru Jahad, who lie imprisoned in the heart of the abyss waiting for the day when they will devour the Earth. As you might surmise, Sadu-Hem is one of the bad guys.

Hellboy goes on to battle many foes, with and without tentacles, and his ongoing story is still being published by Dark Horse Comics. Hellboy vs. tentacles is a popular theme of Hellboy fan art, such as the awesome image below by Nick Derington (via Flickr).

"Hellboy vs. Tentacles" by Nick Derington

Wonder Woman #75 (June, 1993)

Wonder Woman was created by psychologist William Moulton Marsten (who was also the inventor of the lie detector) and first appeared in All Star Comics #8 (1941). She has been in continuous publication (by DC Comics) ever since, and today is the world’s most iconic superheroine. Wonder Woman is one of the most powerful characters in the modern DC Universe, so this must be one strong octopus!

Brian Bolland drew the cover of this issue, and the story (called “The Last True Hero”) was written by Bill Messner-Loebs with pencils by Lee Moder. I’ve been unable to find a plot summary, but I have to assume that it contains at least one bout of sexy octopus wrestling. Exactly why Wonder Woman decided to soak her satin tights with a trip “Into The Depths!” will have to remain a mystery. At least for the time being…

Commander Battle and the Atomic Sub #2 (Sept-Oct 1954)

Sadly, there’s not much to say about Commander Battle and the Atomic Sub, which ran for a mere seven issues between 1954 and 1955. Published by American Comics Group (ACG), the book featured the adventures of the title character and his three “Atomic Commandos.” That’s right, this was a nuclear submarine crewed by only four people! (They apparently needed all the extra space to house their “atomic plane.”) The giant octopus depicted on the cover (which was drawn by Ogden Whitney) appears to have the upper hand arm against the Atomic Sub, but I have a feeling that the tables get turned by the end of the story.

All seven issues were probably written by editor Richard E. Hughes (who co-created Doc Strange and Black Terror for Standard Comics), and most issues (including #2) were penciled by Sheldon Moldoff (best known as one of Bob Kane’s Batman ghost artists, and as artist and co-creator of many of DC Comics’ other Gold and Silver Age characters.)

Sub-Mariner #35 (August, 1954)

Wow, there’s sure a lot going on on this cover! Our hero, Prince Namor of Atlantis, aka the Sub-Mariner, is caught in the unwelcome embrace of a mostly off-panel cephalopod while simultaneously his undersea kingdom is being invaded by Soviet submarines, deep-sea divers, and bathyspheres (!). These brutish Communists appear to have the technology to allow them to fire a harpoon through a glass porthole, which perhaps isn’t that remarkable, but I imagine it would be rather hard to reload…I guess they are counting on that octopus (?) to hold Namor still? There’s also a shark, but it’s unclear where its loyalties lie…

Namor the Sub-Mariner was created by Bill Everett, and he debuted in Timely Comics’ Marvel Comics #1 (October, 1939). Sub-Mariner Comics ran for 44 issues between 1941 and 1955, and most, if not all, of those issues were written and drawn by Everett (including issue #35, seen here). Timely Comics would eventually become the company we know today as Marvel Comics, and Namor remains a prominent character in the Marvel Universe. He is a Human/Atlantian hybrid (Little-known fact: Namor’s last name is McKenzie!) and a mutant to boot—in fact, he was Marvel’s first mutant character. The Sub-Mariner was also Marvel’s first anti-hero, sometimes fighting alongside and sometimes against the likes of Captain America and the Human Torch. Over the decades he’s been associated with a number of superhero teams, including the Invaders, the Defenders, the Avengers, and the X-Men, but he once also tried to conquer the surface world with an army of sea monsters! (It seems Mr. Splashy-Pants has a bit of a temper.)

Perhaps not surprisingly, Namor has a lot in common with DC Comics’ Aquaman (who debuted in 1941, the same year Namor got his own title). They both had human fathers and are Atlantian royalty. The two aquatic heroes have a similar power set—under-water breathing, super-human strength, and the ability to communicate telepathically with sea life—but thanks to his cute little ankle wings, Namor also has the power of flight! The Sub-Mariner also had the moody asshole thing down decades before Aquaman adopted his shirtless Captain Hook look. Also, only one of them looks like Mr. Spock in a Speedo. I’m not saying that is necessarily a good thing…I’m just sayin’.

ICAD begins tomorrow, so get ready to appreciate the hell out of some cephalopods!

The Brave and the Bold #24 (July, 1959)

The first incarnation of DC Comics’ The Brave and the Bold ran for 200 issues from 1955-1983. Originally it was an anthology series featuring adventure tales set in ages past and starring characters like the Silent Knight, the Golden Gladiator, and this guy—the Viking Prince. Issue 24, which featured two Viking Prince stories, would be the last to follow the original swashbuckling format. The title’s next 25 issues were used to test out new characters and concepts (such as a little team called the Justice League of America, which debuted in Brave and the Bold #28), and after that it featured a rotating roster of superhero team-ups.

So back to issue #24, the cover (drawn by comics legend Joe Kubert) depicts Jon, aka the Viking Prince, and his wife Asa struggling against a giant cephalopod of indeterminate identity. Considering that the Viking Prince stories were set in 10th century Scandinavia, I think it’s safe to describe this monster as a Kraken. I don’t know if this is a scene from one of the stories in the issue or if it was created just for the cover…it can be difficult to track down detailed information on these old comics.

The Viking Prince still shows up every now and then in modern DC continuity, most recently in the 2008 mini-series The War That Time Forgot.

More Fun Comics #44 (June, 1939)

More Fun Comics (1935-1947) was the original publication of the company that we know today as DC Comics. It was also the first comic to publish original material rather than reprints of newspaper strips. Issue #6 introduced Doctor Occult, a supernatural detective created by Jerry Siegel and Joe Schuster (who would later become famous as the creators of Superman), and who is often considered one of the earliest superheroes in comics. During its twelve year run, More Fun debuted several other notable characters including The Spectre, Doctor Fate, Green Arrow, and Aquaman.

Of course the stories in More Fun weren’t all about superheroics. They were also about swashbuckling, manly adventure, daring-do, and, of course, axe fights.