Another Year, Another Chief(s) Appearance

My Greatest Adventure #81
“The Nightmare Maker”
Writers: Arnold Drake with Bob Haney
Artist: Bruno Premiani
Editor: Murray Boltinoff
Released: June 6, 1963

Three years ago, I had this fun idea to do posts around the Super Bowl featuring comic books or characters that represented each of the competing teams. I started a list of characters to use so that once the match-up was set, I would be able to figure out pretty quickly what I was going to write about. I haven't finished the list, but it appears it doesn't matter since the Kansas City Chiefs are just going to be in the big game every year.*

I skipped doing an entry for the Chiefs last year and just linked back to my post for Super Bowl LVII, the first appearance of the Doom Patrol and their leader, Niles Caulder, aka the Chief. Then they made it again this year, even though I was all ready to use Beta Ray Bill as my comic book analogue for the Buffalo Bills. To make matters worse, the Philadelphia Eagles beat my Washington Commanders, just as I had settled on featuring Prez for their entry.

The Eagles were the Chiefs' opponents in the aforementioned Super Bowl LVII,** so I didn't even have one new team to write about. I could have just shared the links from two years ago again and maybe finally wrapped up my Amalgam reading. But I decided to go in a couple different directions.

I should have used another first appearance of the Chief and the Doom Patrol, since they've had so many, even by reboot-happy DC standards. But I only remembered that after reading the Doom Patrol's second appearance from My Greatest Adventure #81. There's a chance they miss the Super Bowl before I run out of issues in “The Silver Age Doom Patrol Vol. 1” on Hoopla, but just in case, volume 2 is on there as well.

Even if I didn't have blog-related business with this issue, I would want to read it based on the cover, which features giant-size Rita Farr, aka Elasti-Girl – though she goes by Elasti-Woman in this issue – tangling with a massive octopus with, frankly, a lot of personality in its eyes. “Who is this diva?” my oldest would probably ask.

If the cover wasn't enough, the opening splash page promises another titanic tussle. It also sets up the underlying conflict in the issue. Cliff Steele, who I always called Robotman but goes by Automaton in this story, can't see the abominable snow beast creeping up on Rita and the villagers she's just saved. I see where this is going, I thought. But I didn't exactly.

We meet the octopus first, when the Chief dispatches the Doom Patrol to rescue a sunken U.S. submarine. He's got a plan to recover the soldiers safely and “the largest tank and mask ever built” for Rita to use when diving. At first, I laughed to myself about the Chief having those items handy. But if you're advising and equipping a superhero team that features someone who can grow to giant proportions, packing rescue equipment in their size actually makes sense – at least moreso than the Bat Atomic Dust Separator.

Rita, Cliff and Larry “Negative Man” Trainor dive to the ocean floor to retrieve the sub and its crew, but Rita finds herself face to face with the creature from the cover. And, just like on the cover, she decides to take it on with a handheld torpedo.

It works, the octopus is apparently blown to bits, and the Patrol fixes the sub. As they're preparing to depart, Cliff says he was so busy repairing the sub's propeller that he didn't see the sea monster. Before anyone can pull at that thread, the Chief redirects the team to a town in Canada buried by an avalanche, putting us on a collision course with that splash page.

As Rita, in what I presume are the largest parka and gloves ever made, frees the trapped townspeople, Larry spots the snow beast. Cliff does not, leaving Larry to unleash his Negative Man incarnation and blow up a conveniently placed cabin full of explosives solo.

Larry's ticked that Cliff didn't help, and Cliff assumes there's something wrong with his brain. Since his brain was placed in his robot body by the Chief, he blames Caulder for his condition. A televised interview with a guy named Dr. Janus suggests the giant creatures two-thirds of the team saw are invaders from another dimension. He claims their first attempt was 15 years earlier when a meteorite struck near Logan City, Arizona. Cliff recalls the meteorite but not the strange creatures emerging from it. The rest of the team does remember it, however.

Fearing for his sanity, Cliff asks Larry to send the Negative Man to “borrow” copies of the newspaper from that day. He does, and their headlines reference creatures inside the meteorite. But the Chief thinks Cliff may be right after all.

Us readers find out that of course he is since Dr. Janus is really a fugitive Nazi war criminal who served as the head of Hitler's propaganda bureau. He's got a device that can send messages into people's minds, making them see things that aren't there. He plans to do it again at the site of the meteorite crash, then play hero by driving the invaders back to their home dimension, and from there he rules the world.

The Doom Patrol get to Logan City first. The Chief is monitoring by video from back in Midway City, when a defaced poster jogs his memory. From his personal records, he pulls a photo of Hitler giving his propaganda master a medal and, by drawing a goatee on him, recognizes Janus as wanted Nazi war criminal Josef Kreutz. From there, it's just a simple deduction that Kreutz has a machine that is making people see monsters. Cliff is unaffected because of the steel jacket surrounding his brain.

The Patrol gathers with spectators and an armed posse at the meteorite site, where a green dude with a spear riding a fire-breathing lizard emerges. Cliff and his teammates know it's fake, but before they can prove it, Dr. Janus kicks things up a notch with a “super illusion.” I thought he somehow solidified the creature, but no, he just expanded the visual to make it look like Cliff has been captured by the lizard. With even Rita and Larry believing the illusion, Cliff climbs a nearby tower, yoinks loose a power line and proceeds with “destroying the radio-illusion with high-voltage static.” Science!

This issue reminds me I need to read more Doom Patrol from a variety of eras. This isn't as weird as Grant Morrison and Gerard Way, but it is slightly off-kilter from standard superhero fare, or at least what I would expect from the early '60s. Though Drake and Haney try to shine a bit of the spotlight on everyone, Cliff takes center stage. Amid the fantastic, sometimes silly aspects of the story, his fear that the Chief messed up his brain – literally all of his body he has left – rings true. And making Kreutz a Nazi propaganda master rather than just your standard mad scientist gives the plot a little more depth.

Next up, a new parallel for the Eagles.

* - No, I don't believe it's fixed.

** - Which, if you think about it, really should have been played at Heinz Field.