MYTHCOMICS: "THE 1001 DOOMS OF MISTER TWISTER" (THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #54, 1964)

 

Just as I didn't expect to find a mythcomic in one of the late "Spooky Titans" adventures of the TEEN TITANS' first run, as chronicled here, I also wasn't expecting to reread the first TITANS story and find any concrescent myth-tropes in it, not least because I didn't remember it as a strong story. (Part of the problem was the art by Bruno Premaini, who didn't suit this feature all that well.) But on rereading Bob Haney's first story with the nascent team-- which wouldn't get a formal name until B&B #60-- I found that the tropes were there. But just like "Scourge of the Skeletal Riders," it's not the heroes who incarnate the myth-tropes, but the one-shot menace to the protagonists.

Certainly the title-- which connotes nothing in the story but may be hyperbole meant to suggest the 1000 NIGHTS-- and the opening are nothing impressive. Like many of the Silver/Bronze Age TITANS stories, this one begins with the idea that the Titans-to-be are uniquely situated to solve problems between teenagers and adults. The quarrel in "Dooms"-- the teens of Hatton Corners want a clubhouse, and the adults want "more chores less play" from the adolescents-- is jejune in the extreme. Still, the teens are so hungry for mediators that they write separate letters to Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad, and all three young heroes show up at the small town.

Contrary to expectations, the heroes see the teen club's old meeting-place wrecked. The local adults think the teens did it themselves and ran away, but after Kid Flash and Aqualad hunt about in all directions on land and in the sea, the Titans conclude that something weird is going on. The instigator of the weirdness quickly shows up, a man in colonial garb riding a tornado and calling himself Mister Twister. The mayor immediately recognized the man as "Brom Stikk" (more on the name later) and he freely admits that he spirited away the teens of Hatton Corners.

    

Even ten-year-olds reading this funnybook in 1964 would have recognized one trope from the folkloric story of "The Pied Piper of Hamelin" here. However, Haney adds some interesting new tropes, particularly one that some sites label "The Impossible Task." In colonial times, the land on which Hatton Corners was founded was owned by one Jacob Stikk. But he didn't give the land outright but required that "until the end of time the town will pay me and my descendants one passenger pigeon feather yearly or forfeit ne of your stalwart youths to labor in my service for that year." Jacob's pilgrim contemporaries consider this an elaborate joke, since at the time it's easy to acquire such feathers. So, while the Pied Piper just wants coin of the realm, Jacob sets up a task that's not impossible yet, but which will be in future-- for the implicit purpose of gaining the services of the community's youths. Apparently at some point both Jacob and his immediate descendants vanish, so that the elders of Hatton Corners get used to not paying the rental fee. Then in 1964 Brom Stikk, the alleged descendant of Jacob, shows up clad in a feathered robe and a tricorn hat, and demands all the back rent he's owed. Even though what Brom wants would be valueless even if passenger pigeons weren't extinct, the elders of present-day Hatton Corners laugh Brom out of town, just as the Piper was denied his legitimate fee.

Naturally, the Titans care no more about the justice of Brom's claim than the town-elders do; they care only about rescuing the missing teens. And though most folktales about Impossible Tasks don't involve payments of extinct-animal plumage, the entire "rental fee" comes to resemble a demonic bargain, morphologically closer to Rumpelstilskin more than the Pied Piper. Readers of "Rumpelstilskin" never know why the imp wants the firstborn of the young woman who accepts his bargain, which can only be cancelled by the completion of a seemingly Impossible Task (learning the imp's name). But "Dooms" offers a pretty fair motive: the Titans locate all the captive teens on a nearby island, laboring to construct a pointless monument to Twister's ego. (I note in passing that page 11 of "Dooms" also shows Kid Flash and Aqualad quarreling slightly about whose powers are better, a likely indicator of DC writers embracing more hero-conflict in response to Stan Lee's game-changing of the superhero paradigm.)

Here we see Brom repeating his Impossible Task trope, telling the teens they'll be punished if they don't complete the tower while he Brom is absent. Kid Flash functions as the "helpful animal/god" in similar folktales, completing the task for them, though technically the task isn't necessary, because before Twister gets back, Aqualad summons a whale to break the island from its connection to the ocean-floor and carry it and the captives away. Meanwhile, Robin tails Twister and sees him renew his staff's powers in the cave of an Indian medicine-man. Robin attacks and is defeated, after which Twister drops him off in Hatton Corners, along with a note that he will bring three (not 1001) dooms to the town if he doesn't get his pigeon feathers.

Since we're never in Twister's head for very long, once can't say that he's aware that the elders can't deliver the payment the villain wants. It's more likely that he always intends to destroy the town out of spite, and that's where his "broomstick" name becomes significant: he's a supervillain version of a malefic witch, who wants to wreak evil for evil's sake. The super-powers of Kid Flash and Aqualad are vital in forestalling the three dooms, but it's Robin, whose lack of powers Brom sneers at, who disarms the overconfident evildoer. (I note in passing that the artist shows Brom losing his feathered cape a la Icarus, even though his cape has nothing to do with his ability to fly by conjuring up twisters.)

The adults and teens of Hatton Corners are reconciled while Twister is taken away, never to reappear in his original identity, but only in retconned variants. I conclude that though I don't know how hip Bob Haney was to name-origins, I find it interesting that "Hatton" is often interpreted to mean (roughly) the "settlement of untamed land." In the case of "1001 Dooms," the settlement would seem to imply the banishment of such insidious presences as witches and devils before civilization can take hold-- which suggests that at times Haney allowed his storytelling instincts to roam more freely than he did in other instances.