Number 1887: No, man...NoMan is no man

The T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents heroes of the sixties, spread over the eponymous title, and a couple issues each of comics NoMan and Dynamo, seem much more akin to Golden Age comics of twenty years prior. The stories are simpler than the grand cosmic epic that wove its way through the Marvel Comics line, or the often bizarre stories from DC Comics.

I had not looked at NoMan #2 (1967), from which this story comes, in many years. At the time of its publication I was familiar with artist Ogden Whitney, but not as a superhero artist. To me he was an artist at ACG doing supernatural stories, and he drew the deadpan Herbie comics. I did not know then that Whitney had drawn the hero, Skyman, for Big Shot Comics 25 years before drawing NoMan.

And NoMan is really no man...he is an android. I thought that was cool: a dead guy who could inhabit android bodies, which were stored at HQ. They were ready for him to pop into life and go into action. (Had this concept been an actual Golden Age superhero, he would probably have been shown as a mechanical man, which also sounds okay to me.) Oh, and NoMan had the added benefit of a cloak to render him invisible.

This story is about an Egyptian priestess who has lived for several millenia by killing a guy a day. The body count, which had to be staggering, isn’t discussed, but the method is: she kills them with a kiss. Must’ve been some kiss. I read this when I was twenty and thought, “A kiss? That’s ALL?” A twenty-year-old male would tend to think like that. I wouldn’t doubt I added a few uncensored scenes in my head between the panels, if you know what I mean.

Posted in: Pappy Comics