Golden Age Moment of the Day (65)

From Clue Comics v. 1 #11's Nightmare and Sleepy feature...

Apparently, wrenches let you smash people so hard they fly into the air and strike improbable poses?

-Signing off.

Just Plain Crazy Comics: (Nightmare and Sleepy) And The Corpse That Steals Living Men's Faces!

Been a bit since I've done one of these. Keep a hand on your face, just in case this happens.

Anyway, this story is from Clue Comics #3, and is (obviously) part of the incredibly absurd Nightmare and Sleepy feature.

We start with some guys who just watched a hearse drive past. One of their number happens to be an undertaker, and makes a suggestion.

What a great idea! Let's all make a bet where we collect our winnings over each other's dead bodies! That will surely reinforce our friendship!

This panel brings up a question that I'm curious about:

Is it actually legal to work a bet into your will? That seems strange, at the least.

Anyway, the bet soon has a result. Just a few days later...

The undertaker died first.

OR DID HE DUN DUN DUN?!!

At the funeral, the others are wondering if they'll be able to collect from the dead man.

Funerals are guaranteed to bring out the best in people, apparently.

And now we randomly check on our heroes, Nightmare and Sleepy:

Wait, what? What? You guys are basically hobos who occasionally get paid for wrestling in local matches when you get places. How the heck do you know about this bet, exactly?

Never mind.

Anyway, they see someone climbing up the side of a house.

Naturally, this arouses their natural alertness and suspicions, so their clothes "fly to the winds" (the story's words, not mine) and go running.

They corner the mysterious individual against the wall. (Wait, did that sentence make sense? I'm not sure.)

It has no face? Why...

IT TOOK HIS FACE!

... Sorry.

Anyway, long story short, the mysterious figure hits them a few more times and runs away.

Meanwhile, the guy in that house finds a note from the undertaker at his window that the figure was trying to get in. (Yes, really. Although the story doesn't make that terribly clear, by which I mean I only figured it out while closely examining the panels in preparation for this blog post. I've read it probably half a dozen times before.)

The note tells him where to collect, so he goes there.

And then he dies.

The story gets very repetitive and weird at this point (and it was pretty bad already), so I'll cut to the chase.

Nightmare finally has another fight with the dude, punches him in the face, and his mask shatters... because it was a mirror. (Seriously, that's the explanation for the stolen faces schtick?)

And surprise, surprise, it turns out that it was the undertaker.

So, let me get this straight: The undertaker was of reasonably sound body (other than the obvious), and an older gentlemen, but he was also mere hours from death. And he gave Nightmare, who is, need I remind you, a guy who makes money wrestling for a living (and is darned good at it, for that matter) a really hard fight?

Was this one of those crazy diseases that gives you superhuman powers while you're dying, or what?

I'm having trouble figuring out if this was really a weirder story than the Upside-Down Town one or not.

(Previous posts that mention Nightmare and Sleepy: Golden Age Moment of the Day #22, "Checking the Checker," "The Upside-Down Town."

-Signing off.

Just Plain Crazy Comics: The Upside-Down Town

This story (from Clue Comics #2) could just as easily be titled "Nightmare and Sleepy Fail Physics Forever." It's easy to see why I'd say this:

This ugly scientist's conclusion that the laws of physics had changed in a single town don't say much for his degree.

You'd think nobody would take him seriously, and at first they don't. Then...
Uh...

What? How does that follow? Why would changed gravity cause people to walk on their hands?

Never mind. Dwelling on it won't help.

Check out Nightmare's weird face in this panel:

Don't worry too much about that duck, it's only barely relevant.

Then, more crazy nonsense ensues:

They're prone to picking on wealthy, well-fed women in this comic (you might recall that when I talked about the first Nightmare and Sleepy story, I mentioned that I omitted a scene involving "the Vanderplop Mansion" in it-that's what I'm talking about).

Anyway, it turns out that Nightmare and Sleepy were chasing the hotel cook, and when they find their way to the kitchen, they confront him.

He throws stuff at them, they throw stuff at him, and they all fall down.

And now, for your amusement, reordered panels free of their original context:

If you omit the first dialogue bubble from this panel...
...and the first panel here, you get something that could make sense (more sense, in fact, than the story itself). Heck, leave those in, and it still makes as much sense as the story does.

Anyway, they find the scientist, who has "collapsed" from the "loss" of gravity, but Nightmare finds a rope tied to his pants. (No, really.)

This is mighty peculiar behavior, and he leads them on a merry chase which he thinks ends with his escape and Nightmare and Sleepy unconscious from knockout gas.

Because, of course, being ugly means you're actually evil in old comics.

What a surprise-it's all been faked.

Specifically, it's a real estate scam.

Why would they want their property in a place where gravity "changed?" Whether it makes any sense, people don't like places that have had natural disasters happen to them, because they worry they'll happen again.

Fortunately (I think), Nightmare and Sleepy are here to save us from this stupid plot. (I was wrong, incidentally-they do have their "darkness-enhanced" costumes a few more times-but I'm pretty sure they had stopped using them long before Nightmare's "Batman ripoff" period started.)

I'd end it here, but there was another panel that got my attention as just too stupid funny to pass up:

That's such a stupid attempt at humor, it spins right back around to being funny, then around to being stupid, and back to funny again.

-Signing off.

Just Plain Crazy Comics: "Checking the Checker"

I only put it in quotes because it's only part of the title-the full title should probably be "Nightmare and Sleepy in Checking the Checker," but that's too freaking long for a self-respecting blog post title.

This story comes from Clue Comics #1, and features Nightmare and Sleepy, who appear in some of the most mind-numbingly dumb and completely insane comic book stories ever printed. (A few GAMotD that have featured them are here and here.)

Be warned-not only are there a lot of images (I think my only article with more was The Life and Death of Robot John), but they're pretty low-quality.

Anyway, let's get going. Here's our villain: The Checker.

Not exactly an intimidating specimen, is he? Indeed, he'd be worthy of the Snell's Riddler Award if there was such a thing.

The story opens in Perfect Town, a reputedly very pretty and "ultra modern" city.

Yes, an ultra modern city in the heart of America that has an annual sports carnival. That explains entirely how they can get away with calling it Perfect Town. What a great place.

We meet our protagonists riding a bus into town. Note that this is their first adventure ever, and thus they are not yet Nightmare and Sleepy.

This is about as likable as they ever get.

Anyway, on with the story. Perfect Town's mayor likes to play checkers, and is going somewhere to play checkers. (Checkers? Hmm...)

But...

The Checker has checked in. (Ha ha ha ow.) And he's going to check out, with a big check in the mail-What's that? ... Okay, I'll stop. (It's not fair-they got to make all the awful puns they wanted back then!)

Then, at the fight, an oxymoron occurs: A blaring sound causes a deathly silence to fall.

Bob White (seriously, that's the guy who becomes Nightmare's name), who is wrestling in the arena in a three-piece suit (!), expresses surprise.

Then, despite seeming to have trouble with his opponent before, he instantly defeats him with a headbutt.

And it's true. Bob is anxious to end this fight...

Because he's broke.

Our heroes, folks.

But the kid wants to go to a party first, and Bob concedes.

Oh, no! Not the fire house! Do the heroes change their minds?

They see that it's missing, but it takes another radio broadcast to get them to change their plans.

That's right, now they're skipping out on the party and headed straight outta town. They get on a bus.

Now, here's something that's got me baffled:

Is the Checker talking about a guy named Boye, or about his "boys" and forgot to say "the" in front of "boys" like a normal person? (Also, why does he talk about kidnapping buildings? Holding them hostage makes grammatical sense, but not kidnapping, for crying out loud!)

Now, the Checker is checking out his hostages.

Notice he ends a sentence with two hyphens. The fiend, mauling grammar like that. (And yes, that is the end of his sentence.)

And don't think he can be fooled about how much money people made-he's made a list, and he's checking to see what people made. Double-checking, if necessary.

The fact that he hit an old man upsets Bob and Terry, who happen to be on the very same bus that the Checker checked out. So, they... pull off their jackets to reveal the costumes they were wearing.

Uh... Unless they made costumes more durable back in the day, I'm going to have to call you on that and say that no, the skull would be pretty useless as a crash helmet.

The Checker runs rampant, unchecked, UNTIL!

Holy cheese, those dopey costumes actually kind of work when you do that. Sadly, this awesome feature never shows up in any other Nightmare and Sleepy story. (Also, chance was not taking a strange twist, narrator. His costume was clearly designed to do that, so there's nothing strange about it at all.)

Unfortunately for the heroes, there's a convenient trap door right under their feet, and they and a bunch of the hostages get dumped into a sewer main. Fortunately for them, I don't think the writer had any idea what a sewer main was like inside, and the newly christened Nightmare is able to punch a hole in some kind of seal and help all of them escape.

Seriously, that's what happens.

And then comes another weird moment:

Hm, did we miss something?

...

Nope. Nightmare just gave him a (really lame) nickname completely on the spot.

They head to the mayor's office, asking the secretary if they can see him, but are told he's out. Note that the place where the Checker is playing checkers with the mayor is in the same building-something's up.

So they decide to go check in with the police instead.

And then they head to the mailbox where the ransom money is being sent to the Checker.

Then there's some lame action, and they meet up with the Checker, who had tried to checkmate them with a trap.

They're murdering your men? No, no, they're beating the tar out of your men. If they were murdering them, it would involve their deaths.

Or did you mean that metaphorically?

Never mind.

Anyway, they follow the Checker, and find...

...that the secretary has his hands in the cookie jar a secret control panel.

They beat him up, and then bad panel composition causes Nightmare's foot to float mysteriously over the controls. (Seriously speaking, this story's panels are a horrible mess-notice all the messy edges. Normally, I crop panels off to put them up on the site, but these would have taken hours, and this was taking long enough already...) Meanwhile, the Checker has apparently checkmated the mayor (figuratively speaking)...

He gets what he wants, sort of...

This is a pretty typical example of how fighting works in Nightmare and Sleepy-no cause and effect at all, only effects. How in the heck did the Checker end up on top of Nightmare with a knife in his hand?

Fortunately, Sleepy hits him with the checkers board.

And then we find out that the Checker is...

...Boy, what extensive foreshadowing, huh? You could almost have guessed that there were elevators everywhere under the city, I suppose...

Incidentally, Nightmare and Sleepy lead this wandering lifestyle continuously, and end up in many different bizarre towns (and even more bizarre situations). This particular adventure is considerably less weird than some of the later ones.

-Signing off.