Post by Admin on Nov 27, 2020 17:31:54 GMT
Incredibly Deadly Dangerous Doom
A Hot Day in Gotham
It was a very hot day in Gotham City. Johnny Thunder's face was aglow with a smile, but dripping with sweat, as he entered the brownstone Headquarters of the JSA. One of his friends, who had run a newsstand for the past 10 years, had gotten a 'real' job, and Johnny had just happened to walk by when he was cleaning out the stand. Johnny had been absolutely horrified to see a big stack of comic books about to be summarily dumped into the trash, and he'd begged his friend for the chance to rifle through the stack and claim any issues he wanted. He was carrying a paper bag with almost 3 dozen comic magazines, some never opened before, the rest in very good condition, and most of which Johnny had never read before. He had no other commitments for the day; why not spend a couple of enjoyable hours reading in the air-conditioned JSA meeting room, in his luxuriously comfortable chair, eating JSA-provided snacks and sampling the teams' favorite beers?
Johnny was more than a bit surprised, and a little dismayed, to see several other members gathered around the meeting table. After all, it WAS a holiday - and he'd hoped to do his reading in peace. And avoid some of the good-natured ribbing he often took for reading 'funny books' at his age. "Say, what are you guys doing here? I thought the place would be empty today!" he blurted as he walked into the room. "Not that I'm not glad to see you!" he quickly added.
"We got calls from the Secret Service. Some 'anonymous source' managed to put a bug in Harry's ear, about some kind of deadly menace threatening the whole country, and they called us to stand by 'just in case'," Starman answered, not sounding very happy. "Guess they couldn't reach the rest of the crew."
Johnny took stock of the members present. Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Starman, the Flash, Batman, Dr. Mid-Nite, the Sandman. 'And don't forget Johnny Thunder, son! You're one of the crew too - and an important one!' he reminded himself. "Looks to me like we got enough on the ball here to take care of just about anything," he responded, almost eagerly. Then something struck him. "HEY! They didn't even call ME!" he muttered in anger. And because he was annoyed, he continued. "Say, you think they'd at least give you guys a day off to have fun somewhere!"
And then he was alone.
If you were reading this in a comic book, in the last panel there would have been some glimpses of the T-bolt moving so fast as to be invisible to everyone but the readers...
“Holy Cow! Looks like I did it again. T-Bolt, I know you’re here. I take it back! Get ‘em back, NOW!”
The air near Johnny solidified into a pink figure, floating in the air, a man with some jagged spikes sticking up from his bald head and a tail like a lightning bold instead of legs, with his arms crossed and a stern look on his face. “Now, Master John, you KNOW I can’t do that; what’s done is done. But don’t worry, they’re all having great times – and, they’ll be back tomorrow.”
In spite of the potential danger, Johnny was curious. “Where’d they go and what are they doing that’s making them so happy?”
The T-Bolt held up a hand and started ticking off the 6 jagged fingers. “Starman is in an observatory in Australia, getting a chance to observe the sky of the Southern Hemisphere. Dr. Mid-Nite is performing surgery, the Sandman is building sand sculptures on a sunny beach, the Flash…”
“Never mind, that’s enough. And you can’t get them back? What am I gonna do if it turns out there really is some incredibly deadly dangerous doom threatening the country?”
“I guess you’ll have to deal with it yourself, Brother John. Or find some help.”
“Oh NO! I am in such deep doo doo…” Johnny’s hands whipped up to slap the sides of his head, and the paper bag he was still carrying tore open, and comic books flew and fluttered through the air. As he turned to exclaim over the mess he now had to clean up, and he saw the colorful figures on the covers, his eyes lit up! “Say, maybe I CAN find some help – or MAKE some! There's a lot of really great good guys in that pile!" he continued musingly.
The Thuderbolt answered him conversationally "A lot of really awful bad guys as well. Master John."
Johnny was surprised; usually the T-bolt's tone was mocking or sarcastic. "You read comics too?" popped out before he thought about it. "What's your favorite?"
"I have to do something to pass the time between your calls, boss," the T-Bolt explained. "I think my favorite villain is the Claw - the giant super powered monster who wants to conquer the world and nobody can stop! And I always get a laugh from Stupid Manny. "
"I never liked Stupid Manny. Nobody could be as stupid as he is. We're lucky there's no real heroes like him!" Johnny replied, then shuddered as he continued, "And the Claw is SCARY! Could even Superman stop him?" A look of distress, almost panic, washed over Johnny's face, and he stopped talking. Then he changed the subject. "Say, you, T-Bolt, go check out whatever it is that's got President Truman worried, and come back here and tell me about it. Hurry up, hop to it!"
A couple of small hops brought the T-Bolt to the door; once he was outside, his smaller hops turned into giant leaps as he raced away toward Washington - grumbling the whole time.
Meanwhile, Johnny gathered together all his comics and dropped them on the table in front of him, then sat down and dropped his head to his hands. "I gotta figure this out," he muttered to himself. "I NEED these guys to help me out today, but I CAN'T take the chance of T-Bolt messing up and bringing the Claw to real life! Or even Super Manny, a klutz like him with super power could really cause a lot of problems! What do I do? What DO I do?" Eventually, he sat up and began shuffling despondently through the pile, pulling out some comics and putting them in another pile. "Those are the guys I need," he said sadly to the air. "Say, you'd think I could figure out how to get them here without their bad guys."
A light bulb appeared in the air over his head, and then flashed brilliantly on. Johnny sat up so fast and straight, his head bumped the bulb, and it disappeared. "I'VE GOT IT! It's so simple, I should have thought of it sooner!" He jumped up excitedly and ran out of the meeting room into an office down the hall, then reappeared with a scissors. He sat down and looked at his small pile of comics sadly. "But I didn't even get a chance to read them yet..." Then he cheered up - "I can get the T_Bolt to fix them up for me tomorrow, after the real guys are back!"
He picked up the top issue on his small pile, Crackajack Funnies #40, opened the front cover, and carefully started cutting.
When he was finished with Crackajack #1, he totally butchered Bang Up Comics #1, then continued to several others, sometimes cutting out a figure from the cover, other times paging through the issue before he settled on an illustration. When he came to Green Giant #1 he snarled in annoyance, ran back to the office, and returned with some colored pencils. He carefully colored over a figure before he cut it out, using red, green and yellow. Finally he placed seven cutouts carefully on the chairs where his colleagues had been seated only a half hour ago, then named them each in satisfaction:
"The Owl... Lady Fairplay... Cosmo Mann... Nightro... Silver Streak... the Press Guardian... Master Mystic... America, prepare to greet Johnny Thunder's adJusted Society of America!"
Then in annoyance, "Say, you'd think the T_Bolt would back by now!" And the T_Bolt instantly appeared before him.
"You rang, Master John? By the way, "incredibly deadly dangerous doom" is something of an understatement. Typical."
"Well, in that case," Johnny swept his hand in a grand gesture to indicate the chairs around the table, "Say, you, T-Bolt - the guys on the top side of the cut-outs, make 'em real for the day, bring the gear they need, and fill them in on what they need to know - and make sure you only do the top sides!"
And instantly, once again the chairs were full and Johnny was once again surrounded by heroes!