(From "Captain Flash" number 1, 1954.)
The Nerdmudgeon Podcast
Three middle-aged nerds (including yours truly!) review all of the MCU movies in chronological order. Short, funny, and full of good vibes, check it out and let us know what you think!
Nerdmudgeon.com
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
What, does he melt in Hot Water, but not Cold?
I guess maybe a cold shower is “brisk” and a hot shower would be…I dunno, maybe “relaxing”? Or perhaps after a good vigorous stump-flinging, there’s already a burning sensation?
You need hot water to wash all the sap off of your hands after flinging the stump. 🙂
Well Dan Gonzalez, we’re calling it sap now are we? 🙂
The backstory on this is that “Captain Flash” was one of the very, very first true Silver Age super-heroes to make an appearance, at least with a modern look and suite of powers. On one hand he’s pretty typical, getting Superman-like abilities after suffering a massive dose of radiation.
But then you get really weird stuff like the panel above. He’s told he’s going to die after the radiation exposure, so he goes home to wait it out. Only instead of dying, he slowly discovers he’s got super-powers.
None of which explains why his shower at home is capable of flesh-boiling temperatures. Seriously, that’s what he’s worried about here, that his shower is going to boil him alive because that’s how hot it can get. Who deliberately builds a hot water heater that can get that hot?
He also only has his powers for two hours after he claps. Seriously. Clapping is what activates them. I imagine he’s hell at a U2 concert.
Was his shower by chance designed by one of his future villainous foes? Because otherwise, a common household luxury that doubles as a death-trap is a bug, not a feature.
Call me nieve in the ways of comics but truth be told I’m not entirely sure what the particular difference is between Golden age, Silver age or any other age of comics. Granted I recognize many changes along the way with regards to design layout, story content and quality but I’m not sure what the definition of each is. Can anyone elaborate?
MMI, your best bet is to start with Wikipedia — Golden Age and Silver Age.
In a nutshell, though Golden Age comics were published between the late 1930s and 1950s. They were dominated by patriotic characters and Superman, but included an enormous variety of genres other than super-heroes. Romance, horror, and Westerns were also huge. Sales were off the charts and their cultural dominance was significant.
Sales eventually cratered, the Comics Code Authority was implemented in the wake of “harming the children” scares by anti-comics crusader Fredric Wertham, and the entire industry was seriously damaged.
Eventually, in the mid-Sixties, super-hero titles started to be published again, led by DC’s revamp of some classic characters of the Golden Age. The new characters were mostly science-driven (Hawkman went from a resurrected Egyptian prince to a visitor from another planet) and dressed in flashier, skin-tight costumes. The driving background ethos went from the patriotic World War II era concerns to the decidedly different Cold War fears of nuclear annihilation and all the cultural baggage that goes with that.
That’s all very simplified, but in a nutshell Golden Age was the height of comics popularity and was from the 1930s to the mid 1950s. Silver Age started in the mid 1960s and basically went on to around 1970 or so.
So whaddaya call the period from the 1950s to the 1960s? The Electrum Age?
And while even I would have qualms about a hot water source capable of spontaneously inflicting third degree burns, it’s worth noting that keeping the system HOT (not just somewhat warm) is useful for a few reasons. Key one that comes to mind for me – longer hot shower, as cold mixed in with it extends the supply line of ‘warm’ water coming out of the pipe.
Yes EnderX, but HOT doesn’t mean “OHMYGODIAMBURNINGMYFLESHOFF!” which is very much the reaction he’s giving in this issue. It’s like he thinks he’s going to die from it.
The period between the eras doesn’t have much of a name, because it was a real low point in super hero comics specifically, and really the industry as a whole. Superman was about the only thing still selling, and that in reduced numbers. Maybe the Four Color Interregnum or something 🙂