MYTHCOMICS: "NOAH'S ARK" (MIGHTY SAMSON #27, 1975)

 

In my kidhood, I was aware of the Gold Key title MIGHTY SAMSON, but I don't even remember looking at it. I probably was busy emptying my pockets for much of the output of the other companies, so something had to be overlooked. In retrospect, though, MS does have some points of interest. It was probably the most successful Gold Key franchise not owned by some company other than Gold Key and was created by the celebrated Otto Binder in 1964. Binder wrote the first twenty issues, after which other writers pinch-hit on an irregular basis until the series ended in 1975. 

Though Binder had authored a healthy quantity of mythcomics, his main idea with MS seems to have been, "Kids like monsters, so I'll give them lots of monsters." To this end he devised a post-apocalyptic world recovering from long exposure to the radioactive fallout of devastating wars, which had leveled cities and bred all sorts of weird mutations. In fact, the main hero was a mutant as well, born with immense strength, not unlike many of the strongmen Binder had written for other comic books. Samson, accompanied by the scientist Mindor and his hot daughter Sharmaine (implicitly but never literally Samson's main squeeze), wandered the ruined world, seeking to rediscover the lost principles of science for the betterment of all humans. This quest brought the protagonists into conflict with numerous petty tyrants, religious fanatics, and of course, monsters. Binder seemed to take some pleasure in concocting all sorts of freaky combinations of actual animals, with such names as "The Kangorilla" and "The Horned Rhinophant," most of whom Samson slew with his fantastic strength. To be sure, the Biblical Samson wasn't that notable as a beast-killer, being credited only with the slaying of one lion, while his Greek counterpart Heracles racked up many more monsters, including a lion said to be invulnerable to spears. Binder did toss in one element derived from the Biblical strongman, that of blindness. But Archaic Samson was blinded by his captors the Philistines, while in the comic, Mighty Samson loses an eye in his first major creature-battle, with a monster combining aspects of a lion and a bear, a "Liobear."     

 But none of the mighty one's adventures had the density of myth, except this one, written by one Al Moniz, who apparently worked in comics only during the middle seventies, and then mostly for Western/Gold Key. "Noah's Ark" in issue #27 is not precisely the first time in the series any writer evoked the "original apocalypse" of The Deluge, but it's the first time any writer did so with conviction.       

For instance, the opening intro specifies that the mutated "plants and animals now match the monstrosity of man's self-destructiveness in size and horror." Moniz then alludes to Mighty Samson as a heroic counter to the monsters and then wonders if "Noah" may be just as significant.

Naturally the Noah of this story is no more related to his Biblical counterpart than Mighty Samson is to the Nazirite, and Moniz gives his character a significant surname, that of "Caine." In the Bible Cain is the first murderer and so is often viewed as the ancestor of all wickedness-- not least the wickedness that dominates humankind when God sends the flood to wipe out almost all life on Earth. So Moniz eventually answers his own question in the negative.

Samson, Sharmaine and Mindor stumble across a rarity: a fawn, a creature from the era before the great wars. The fawn leads the trio to a devastated zoo, only to discover a laboratory, where Doctor Noah Caine dwells.  
     

Caine explains that he was a zookeeper before the atomic war, and that he anticipated the coming destruction. Though other humans did not take Caine's project seriously, Caine built an ark, stocked it with the animals he loved, and placed them, and himself, into hibernation. Caine arose from his coma and made it to shore. However, he could not free the entire ark from its subsea location thanks to some big mutant critter impeding it, so he asks for Samson's help at monster-dislodging.

Once the colossal critter is vanquished, Caine is able to release the purebred beasts of the pre-apocalyptic age upon that of the mutated world. However, Sharmaine is able to learn, from some long-preserved library, that Noah Caine deliberately banned humans from his ark out of his near-worship of animals. He also hoped that the beasts of his time would "inherit the earth," but it soon becomes evident that the "normie" animals begin transforming into freaks as soon as they breathe the polluted atmosphere.

Caine is even more crazed than before when he realizes that humans alone have (apparently) built up an immunity to mutating radiation, unlike his precious pre-lapsarian animals. He announces plans to unleash his mutated creatures on humans and sets his mutant-fawn Bimbi upon Samson. The strongman himself doesn't win the battle, but the very nature of the fawn's deranged nature works against the animal-master. Bimbi hallucinates that Caine is identical with one of the native mutants of the post-apoc world, and attacks Caine's bully pulpit. Caine perishes, and Mindor decides to send all the "normie" animals back into their ark-hibernation, in the hope that someday the earth will be capable of sustaining their lives again. There's a certain irony in "Ark," since ordinarily one thinks of Biblical Noah as a great preserver of life, while a monster-killer like Biblical Samson is only good insofar as he protects his tribe from predators. But even though Caine is correct in assigning blame for the world's ruination to humans, his unconditional love for the lower beasts makes him just as destructive as any other human-- though his good intentions, at least, will be venerated in some future era, when the earth's actually ready for rebirth.