Guest-starring the Creeper, with a cool Neal Adams cover!The Story: "Versus the Creeper!" by Denny O'Neil, Dick Dillin, and Sid Greene. The issue opens with a homemade superhero, Mind-Grabber Kid, attempting to stop some crime taking place using some sort of paralysis ray, which stops the criminals.
Unfortunately, no one notices this act of superhero-dom because on TV, the JLA is being filmed performing their amazing feats for charity! M-G Kid walks away, envious of them...
Meanwhile, busybody Batman is trying to talk the JLA into looking into this new "hero", the Creeper, who he doesn't know whether is a good guy or bad guy! Hey guys, howabout finding a replacement for Wonder Woman?
Anyway, a group of alien invaders(and this is only page five!) find themselves in communication with M-G Kid, where he tells them the planet is being menaced by a group of evil dictators, the Justice League!
The aliens find the JLA helping out the Creeper fighting off some non-costumed bad guys, which they assume to mean that M-G Kid was right! The aliens then attack and defeat Flash, Green Lantern, Atom, and Superman(wow!!). M-G Kid sees the error of his ways when these non-costumed crooks are about to murder the unconcious JLAers, and uses his ray helmet to revive Superman, who stops them.
M-G Kid apologizes to the aliens and the JLA. During the JLA and aliens' chat, The Creeper wanders off, the JLA having decided he is in fact a good guy. M-G Kid walks home, realizing he was wrong to be jealous.
Roll Call: Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, Atom
Notable Moments: The issue ends with M-G Kid, and DC asks us "Want to see more of Mind-Grabber Kid? Let us know...because we sort of like him!"
DC was apparently alone in this assessment, since as far as I know M-G Kid never appeared again. Maybe some issue of JLA Classified someday...
I've always imagined that DC either got no mail at all or bag of "Hell No!" type letters.
ReplyDeleteMGK is possibly the lamest character I have ever read.
Wow......pretty dumb sounding story there. I'm rather glad that MGK died on the drawing board there.
ReplyDeleteActually, Mindgrabber Kid finally made his return to the DC Universe in Bulleteer #3, part of Grant Morrison's epic Seven Soldiers project. He's treated semi-satirically but very affectionately as a perpetual third-stringer still looking for his big break many years later. At one point MGK delivers a touching soliloquy on his nostalgia for the era when he teamed up with the JLA -- a speech that reads metaphorically about GM's nostalgia for this era of comics -- and some even say the character is pencilled by Yanick Paquette to closely resemble Morrison himself.
ReplyDeleteOnly Morrison could make me want to read the return of this character.
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