Tuesday, February 5, 2013

Dog Burns Down Chicago... Runs Home and Hides Under Bed


Robert Gillis saves the day again with a few beauties from the Silver Age...


From Jimmy Olsen #59.  Okay, so Jimmy was in London and set his watch ahead and that messed with the frequency of the signal watch.

Sooooooo...  am I to presume that for six months out of the year when Jimmy adjusts for Daylight Savings Time, he's just out of luck then as well?

That's some pretty lame technology you've got going on there, Supes.  This watch will send me a signal whenever you're in trouble, Jimmy... BUT GOD IN HEAVEN ABOVE HELP YOU IF YOU ADJUST THE TIME ON THIS THING!

Here's some more Krypto fun from Superboy #111.  Krypto is changing into various animals because... well, I'll let Krypto explain it:


Now I realize that Red Kryptonite has random effects and all that...

.... but seriously?  Just being near the animal is what decides it?

So, you'd think that with this newfound knowledge, Krypto would avoid anything that might constitute food to your average meat-eating fella, but apparently he didn't because he later turned into a cow.

And caused the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.


Note that Krypto makes no effort to fix his "boo-boo."  Krypto is indeed part of the "Superham Family."   An estimated 300 people are dying right below him, and all Krypto can do is say "how about that!" and head home.

As an aside, no one actually knows for sure how the fire actually started.  Mrs. O'Leary was a great scapegoat because she was an Irish Catholic Immigrant, but the Chicago Republican reporter who reported it (a jackass by the name of Michael Ahem) would admit 20 years later that he made up the whole thing for "colorful copy."  Yeah, I'm sure that did Mrs. O'Leary a lot of good.  Jerk.


Robert has also started a brand new CMNS meme:



The Random Sucker-Punch!(tm!)

We're not sure from whence this came, but it's awesome.

Thanks again, Robert!

See you tomorrow!

9 comments:

MarvelX42 said...

Well, you are getting into the whole time paradox thing with the fire. If Krypto puts out the fire, than he changes history. Certain people who should be dead will be alive, others may not even be born and so on. Just leaving was probably the best thing he could have done. This one is what is known as a predestination paradox.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predestination_paradox

Anonymous said...

Very true, I'm just amazed how casual he is about the whole thing! Krypto: "Oops, what a knucklehead I am, starting the worst fire in history, well, back home for lunch, I guess!"

God, I love the silver age!

Adam Barnett said...

I thought about that, but apparently everything Krypto does is according to history or he wouldn't have started the fire in the first place. So couldn't he have seen the thing through and still kept things right?

Wayne Allen Sallee said...

And what if part of the history of the Chicago Fire stopping abruptly in certain places--I live here, Damen Avenue seemed to be the western edge even though, by all rights, the fire should have kept burning. The claim being, well, the wind changed and blew towards the lake. Krypto might have used his super-breath to extinguish the flames from spreading further (and still letting the other buildings burn and the people die), thus leaving no predestination paradox.

But he didn't and I just typed way too much about a cartoon dog. Though I will say, if it was Superman here in 1871, he would have turned his heat vision on high.

Fun fact: Manistee, Michigan burned to the ground the same day, hence the thought that perhaps a meteor broke up over the lake.

Adam Barnett said...

I read that about the meteor, but everything ELSE I've read said that the odds of a meteor starting a fire is actually pretty slim.

MarvelX42 said...

The odds of alot of things happening are pretty slim, but they happen all the time. One guy was struck by lightning 7 times on different occasions. How likely is that? I had never heard the theory that it was a meteor tho.

P.S. If you wanna find out where that random sucker punch came from, well that is obviously Burne's art. That should get you a start.

MarvelX42 said...

Actually I must correct something. A meteor by it's very definition is something that doesn't strike the ground. It would have been a meteorite.

Buzz said...

Wow! I've read TONS of stories about Jimmy's special watch, but I never knew it was so unreliable!

Oh, wait a minute, no, I guess I did. Wasn't it always getting messed up somehow?

Would it be wrong to even go so far as to say the only time it worked well was when Jimmy was doing something unimportant, like calling Supes to a fan club meeting or something? Or when him getting saved by Supes was only mildly incidental to the main plot?

Either way, hilarious post!

MarvelX42 said...

http://rt.com/news/meteorite-crash-urals-chelyabinsk-283/