Strange Tales #113: Flamin' 'Eck 34

Story plot: Stan Lee

Script: Jerry Siegel

Art: Dick Ayers

Lettering: S. Rosen

If you were a hero who could generate fire across his entire body, and you found yourself up against sentient plants and trees, how would you apply your powers to the situation?

Would you:

A. go nova and incinerate any vegetable matter in a 50 yard radius, leaving the mad gardener with nothing to take control of?

B: Launch a fireball into the sky to evaporate all of the moisture out of the plants in an instant, without ever causing anything to catch fire, especially not all the dried leaves that would suddenly appear?

I know what you would choose, I know what Johnny chose, and sadly, the two are incompatible.

Check out our coverage of Strange Tales #113 on our eighteenth episode: Pharoahs And Plants, Spiders And Soldiers

[audio FF_Episode_18.mp3]

Strange Tales #113: Flame On 48

Story plot: Stan Lee

Script: Jerry Siegel

Art: Dick Ayers

Lettering: S. Rosen

The second of Jerry Siegel's scripting contributions to Strange Tales takes the form of the completely barmy Plantman story, whereby a gardener, armed with a pair of techno-shears, believes that, contrary to all scientific evidence, plants have intelligence and his shears can increase their IQ. Lightning strikes his shears, and suddenly he can command any plant matter to do anything he bids, no matter how impossible or lethal to those plants. Naturally, he decides to become a criminal, and terrorises the town's parks.

10 pages into the 13 page story and Siegel manages to include one of the tropes of the series, having become rather distracted with plants. Here, in a fairly underwhelming heroic moment, Johnny races towards the door, dropping his catchphrase like it's an afterthought.

Check out our coverage of Strange Tales #113 on our eighteenth episode: Pharoahs And Plants, Spiders And Soldiers

[audio FF_Episode_18.mp3]

Strange Tales #112: Nova Time 5

Story plot: Stan Lee

Script: Jerry Siegel

Art: Dick Ayers

Lettering: S. Rosen

So, how exactly did Johnny draw the explosion and radiation to himself, and then survive these extreme conditions?

Well, it was all due to heat. The heat drew the other heat, the kinetic force, and the radiation of the explosion directly upwards to him in the atmosphere. When he was as far away as he could get, he went to a nova intensity, presumably burning away all the nasty harmful stuff that would give him multiple cancers.

Yeah, it's all about a little bit bollocks, isn't it...

Check out our coverage of Strange Tales #112 on our seventeenth episode: No Funny Title Springs To Mind

[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/ffcast/Episode_17.mp3]

Strange Tales #112: ATOMIC POWER! 7

Story plot: Stan Lee

Script: Jerry Siegel

Art: Dick Ayers

Lettering: S. Rosen

It's been over a year since we last looked at an example of Stan's hilarious misunderstandings of how nuclear power works, and I think you'll agree, today's panel was worth the wait.

Having failed to decide if the Eel or the device he was carrying was the true threat, Stan and Jerry decide to ramp up the tension by revealing that the explosion is due to occur right next to a Veterans' Hospital. Ignoring the fact that the scale of the explosion and resulting fallout would not only obliterate the hospital but pretty much all of the town and surrounding countryside, the story decides that only a noble sacrifice from Johnny can negate the blast.

So, Johnny flies upwards, and wills both the force of the explosion as well as the radiation up into the atmosphere with him. Imagine that. No, really, imagine it. Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Fukushima, each of these catastrophic nuclear events could have been prevented by a teenager with a lot of willpower.

Even more hilarious is the ridiculous expository speech bubbles which, thanks to the high perspective showing the curvature of the Earth, suggests that the people speaking are either in space, or they're shouting really loudly so that the reader can hear them.

Check out our coverage of Strange Tales #112 on our seventeenth episode: No Funny Title Springs To Mind

[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/ffcast/Episode_17.mp3]

Strange Tales #112: Flamin' 'Eck 33

Story plot: Stan Lee

Script: Jerry Siegel

Art: Dick Ayers

Lettering: S. Rosen

I wonder if Johnny has ever stopped to think about his powers, as well as the basic properties of fire and heat. He clearly seems to think that his giant flaming dome will project heat rays downwards, forcing the helicopter to land, betraying the fact that he has no idea that heat rises.

I don't blame Johnny, I blame the high school teachers in Glendale. They're the ones who have clearly failed to instil basic physics into Johnny. Education in the 1950s was clearly lacking.

Check out our coverage of Strange Tales #112 on our seventeenth episode: No Funny Title Springs To Mind

[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/ffcast/Episode_17.mp3]

Strange Tales #112: Flamin' 'Eck 32

Story plot: Stan Lee

Script: Jerry Siegel

Art: Dick Ayers

Lettering: S. Rosen

Equipped with a device to pick up the Eel's body vibrations and thus locate him before he turns Marvel's faux-Riverdale into a smoking pit in the ground, Johnny emits a tracer fireball. That is, a fireball that will follow these vibrations and home in on him.

Er... right... How much is the Eel vibrating, exactly? Most people could put their hands on a wall and never feel the vibrations that they give off. So how exactly is a non-sensory ball of fire supposed to pick up the vibrations of an individual who could be over a mile away? Who knows?

Jerry sure doesn't...

Check out our coverage of Strange Tales #112 on our seventeenth episode: No Funny Title Springs To Mind

[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/ffcast/Episode_17.mp3]

Strange Tales #112: Flame On 47

Story plot: Stan Lee

Script: Jerry Siegel

Art: Dick Ayers

Lettering: S. Rosen

Across several pages that didn't involve any of our tropes, a plot has developed. A broadcaster has been whipping up anti-Johnny hatred, whilst the Eel accidentally steals a miniature atomic bomb and irradiates himself. Hiding out in town, he is relatively unaware that he or the bomb (it's not quite clear which) could explode at any moment and destroy everything.

Being a moral conundrum in the early 1960s, Johnny's decision as to whether he should continue as the Torch in the face of public opposition is an easy one to make. Extra-easy, considering that if he doesn't the entire town is going to blow up. So, he flames on, and turns off his television set. Which presumably had an asbestos coating.

Check out our coverage of Strange Tales #112 on our seventeenth episode: No Funny Title Springs To Mind

[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/ffcast/Episode_17.mp3]

Strange Tales #112: Flamin' 'Eck 31

Story plot: Stan Lee

Script: Jerry Siegel

Art: Dick Ayers

Lettering: S. Rosen

"There!" cries Johnny. "A blazing version of Niagara Falls!" But the crowd give him nothing but dirty stares, presumably because the idea of flames falling out of the sky towards them overrides any appreciation they may have had towards his artistic abilities.

And yes, either Jerry Siegel or Sam Rosen have a particular problem spelling the name of the most famous US/Canadian waterfall attraction...

Check out our coverage of Strange Tales #112 on our seventeenth episode: No Funny Title Springs To Mind

[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/ffcast/Episode_17.mp3]

Strange Tales #112: Flamin' 'Eck 30

Story plot: Stan Lee

Script: Jerry Siegel

Art: Dick Ayers

Lettering: S. Rosen

Let's deal with the elephant in the room first. The script for this issue and the next  of Strange Tales was written, from notes by Stan, by Jerry Siegel (credited as Joe Carter). An unfortunate figure at this time, Siegel was routinely abused by Mort Weisinger at DC, his work help up for ridicule in the offices. As suggested by Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, Stan gave Jerry these assignments almost out of pity for the creator who kick-started superhero comics. We rather liked this issue, we weren't such a fan of the next.

Things start off with Johnny irritating everyone in Glendale by constantly showing off, exhibiting ADHD tendencies long before such a condition would become well-known. These panels get included for the idea that concentric rings of fire would burn away in the air for any time at all, remaining perfectly stationary.

Check out our coverage of Strange Tales #112 on our seventeenth episode: No Funny Title Springs To Mind

[audio http://traffic.libsyn.com/ffcast/Episode_17.mp3]