What do you do when you're a successful, popular writer and editor of exciting crime comics, and then suddenly the industry yanks the rug right from under your feet and says "no more crime comics"? What DO YOU DO?
Well, if you're Charles Biro, creator of the original Daredevil (the one that fought Hitler), Airboy, Crimebuster, and one of the most successful comic books of the 1950s, which was titled "Crime Does Not Pay" and was completely run out of business by the introduction of the Comics Code, what you do is quit comic books entirely. But before you do, you give the safe, crime-free, post-Code comic world one more shot with your most unbelievable character yet - Jim Dandy!
Jes, it's Jim Dandy, of whom it can be said there has never been anything like it or him, and whose secret is so amazing that the mouths of dissolute youths erupt in flames upon attempting to uncover it! Go Jim Dandy go!
What ARE Dash and Snacks - Dash is the skinny one while Snacks is the shorter one who apparently eats a lot of snacks - what are Dash and Snacks doing in Jim Dandy's basement? Why are they about to ingest a weird concoction of condiments and home remedies? Who is the little blue guy named "Cup"? And could, indeed, stranger things happen? You've piqued our interest, Jim Dandy, and now we're compelled to read on!
Look at Cup, that weird blue guy, as he lifts a car to let some cats pass. Which they could do anyway, but whatever. Yes, Cup can increase or decrease his atomic weight at will, making himself heavier or lighter! Because that's really not what "atomic weight" is. And anyway, if you make yourself heavier by turning yourself into a mass of one of the heavier elements, like say uranium or plutonium, suddenly that blue coloring is deadly radiation that destroys everything that hugs it - like Jim Dandy here! Yow!
Yes, Jim Dandy has a big secret, namely that weird blue guy with amazing science-fiction powers that hangs out with him all day and shoves him up in the air and that Snacks and Dash can't see! And if there's one thing that really gets under Snacks and Dash's skin, it's a kid that can jump and lift things.
See, use to be Jim Dandy was just a kid with a bad haircut who spent a lot of time in the basement with his radio ham equipment. And if that wasn't sad enough, he didn't even use his radio ham equipment to, you know, talk to other sad radio hams. Instead he just sent a high frequency radar signal straight out into outer space and through the bodies of anyone unlucky enough to be walking around in the path of his powerful radar beam, which can cook your insides, how do you think a microwave oven works? Anyway, in between not talking to people on his ham radio and hollering at the pesty neighbor kid Tumbles, Jim Dandy leads a rich and full and poorly coiffed life.
But of course the radio signal was picked up by the fleet of flying saucers keeping Earth under surveillance at all times, and Cup piloted his own flying saucer (get it - "cup" and "saucer") down to Earth to hang out with Radar Boy.
And being a flying saucer person, Cup was invisible and inaudible to Earth people, leading to all kinds of shenanigans! What sort of mischief will Jim Dandy and his alien/robot buddy get up to today?
Uh oh, looks like Snacks and Dash are dangling membership in "The Cat-Head Club" in front of Tumbles in an attempt to learn how Jim Dandy is doing all this leaping and lifting!
Don't do it Tumbles! Oh Tumbles.
Meanwhile Cup and Jim Dandy are getting up to some kooky hi-jinks with Jim Dandy's girl Denise, who gets kissed by an invisible spaceman because Jim apparently needs a pinch-hitter when it comes to girls. I think Jim's spending too much time alone with his ham radio set.
So Cup can just fly down to Earth, kiss all our girls, and make us look stupid when we get mad? Look buddy this is how things like "War Of The Worlds" and "Earth Vs The Flying Saucers" got started, and we don't want any of that!
Okay. If tomorrow is July 4th then today is July 3rd. Which means the flashback of Cup arriving in the winter was, like, six months back. This being the second issue of Jim Dandy, at this rate I figure by issue #3 it'll be the 1960s. Also why is everybody wearing sweaters and jackets? It's July!
Tumbles' secret hiding place behind the dress dummy is no good and a weepy Tumbles confession is interrupted by Jim Dandy getting one of his patented Jim Dandy schemes that are guaranteed Jim Dandy! I dunno, maybe he SHOULD just call Eisenhower and tell the President all about the space aliens that invisibly walk among us, like in the film "Invisible Invaders" starring John Carradine and John Agar, tonight on Monster Chiller Horror Theater, eh kids
And so the Tumbles have turned! Now a double agent, Tumbles feeds false intel to the Dash/Snacks team, and it's through the coal chute for those two. Whee!
Play-acting for his secret "audience", Jim Dandy mixes up a special fake potion that he knows Dash and Snacks will be sure to huff down without a second thought. Sadly, no laxatives were available, and it being the 1950s, doses of mind-warping hallucinogens were not generally at hand in suburban basements.
And there we have it, mouths boiling from mild chemical burns, gastrointestinal system gurgling and rumbling thanks to the castor oil, their mischevious plans to learn Jim Dandy's big secret foiled once and for all, our two goofs finally re-enact the cover to Jim Dandy #2. There would only be one more issue of Jim Dandy before Charles Biro said "so long" to the comic book world once and for all. But is there more to this issue of Jim Dandy than meets the eye? Why yes there is.
Never let it be said that Mister Kitty doesn't give you funny boners!
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