For All Mankind #30

Rob and Super Friend Ryan Daly review "Gorilla Warfare Against the Humans" by E. Nelson Bridwell, Ramona Fradon, and Bob Smith, from SUPER FRIENDS #30! Plus Listener Feedback!

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12 responses to “For All Mankind #30

  1. Wonderfully fun issue and episode! I love the panel of Grodd and Giganta thinking about their feelings for each other…like something out of a really weird romance comic!

    To answer the question about Ramona Fradon and Secret Origins: No, she never drew an issue of that series. I know that Fradon was drawing the Brenda Starr comic strip at the time, and maybe that job was keeping her too busy for additional comic book work. That might also explain why Fradon didn’t draw any pages in Who’s Who.

  2. Great to hear Ryan on For All Mankind – welcome to the late 1970s DCTV Comics Ryan!
    What I recalled from this issue was the (what I thought at the time) weird attraction between Grodd and Giganta. Now I look at it and say “hey to each their own!” I guess that is personal growth?
    Robin getting annoyed at Superman was definitely the highlight of this issue, I guess it shows why he is always comfortable around everybody else in the DCU, animated or not.
    Looking forward to Black Orchid, chums!

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  3. Welcome to THIS show on the network and the world of the Super Friends comic, Ryan – I hope you’ll enjoy a few more issues.
    Fantastic discussion and I expected nothing less since Ryan was your guest on this episode. His Secret Origins podcast is truly a high point for all podcasts covering comics. If any listeners of For All Mankind haven’t listened to it – please do so, it’s truly great.

    This issue is such great fun. The concept of Gorilla City is just so spectacular. I wasn’t familiar with that first issue Rob talked about being printed in The Amazing World Of DC Comics, but when I’m done writing this I’m going to try to find it on the internet. I really wish there was a hardcover collection of all of those TAWODCC issues. The few I have are great and I’d love to read them all.

    This was the only (pre-Crisis) appearance that I had read of Giganta and didn’t understand why she wasn’t using her growing powers, not realizing that it’s basically a totally different character.

    For as many times as I’ve read this comic I don’t know that I’ve ever noticed the silhouette of Gleek in the corner of page 8!

    I like the pose of Batman kicking the gorilla in the jaw with his boot on page 9 because it’s so similar to the pose on the cover of issue #26 (with the huge Bat-heel)!

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    1. Um, my dad’s collection has all of the Amazing World of DC Comics issues, and “Grodd of Gorilla City” was not printed in any of them. The closest I see is the unused alternative first issue of Secret Society of Super-Villains in AWODCC 11, which has Grodd in it.

      The unpublished “Grodd of Gorilla City” issue was featured in Back Issue 15 in their “Greatest Stories Never Told” feature. It said the 20-page story would have explained how Grodd escaped Gorilla City to join the Secret Society (since that was not explained in the *unused* version of SSOSV issue 1). And if it went to series, the stories would overlap with SSOSV.

      The Back Issue article features 5 pages of art: pages 1, 14, 17, 19, and 20. 17 is my favorite because it shows Grodd trying to evade the Gorilla City Soldiers by disguising himself with a pair of glasses, which Rob mentioned.

      null

      I hope to see the full story someday, even though I already read the ending.

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  4. Hello Rob and welcome Ryan to the Hall of Justice!

    It’s always interesting to hear the opinion of someone who has no familiarity with this series, and like Ryan, I like my DC heroes to not be dark and brooding. I’m not saying they should always be happy and positive, but there’s no need for them to be the exact opposite of that all the time either. Ryan, I can only echo what Rob said, you should look into this series for you to read with your son. The hard cover collections are great!

    I had no idea that Giganta had so few appearances in pre-Crisis DC, but as I understood it at the time, it was the cartoon that gave her the ability to grow in size and mass, she was not able to do that in her earlier appearances.

    Hard pressed to pick a ‘best friend’ this issue. The action was too spread out to everyone evenly, it seemed.

    Regarding Zan revitalizing Aquaman, that happened once before in issue #14. Also, in a recent issue of JLA, when a powerful foe was fighting the JLA, Zan turned into “a bucket of ocean water”, and Batman threw him on Aquaman, powering him up.

    See ya next podcast!

    Chuck

  5. This was a fun story, even though I am a teenager and this comic is not supposed to appeal to me.

    In addition to getting rid of their enemies, I suppose love was the key motivation for the villains’ scheme: Giganta wanted to be an ape again, but still keep her human intelligence, that way Grodd would be attracted to her. I suppose that’s kind of… sweet, I guess? I also like that, despite the limited pages he had, ENB takes the time — twice — to have Grodd explain why he didn’t proceed to use their device to change Giganta back into a gorilla yet despite the test on Professor Nichols suggesting that the device works the way they want it to. So Grodd being extra cautious was him being sweet as well (or… he actually wasn’t into Giganta and wanted to put off the transformation as long as possible…).

    And Grodd and Giganta did team up by themselves (without the Legion of Doom) in one short episode of Super Friends called “Two Gleeks are Deadlier than One.” Giganta kidnaps Gleek, and Grodd replaces him with a robot duplicate with disintegrating eye beams — which DESTROY ALL OF THE SUPERFRIENDS! However, Wonder Woman and Green Lantern were somehow on to the plan and had set up their own robot duplicates of all of the Superfriends to play victim to robot-Gleek’s attack. The Wonder Twins had no idea, of course, and were convinced they saw their heroes being slain, which served to make the villains think they’ve won and let down their guard — and no doubt emotionally scarred the Exorian teens for life!

    Having only two “official” appearances in the Golden and Silver Age was likely the reason Giganta of Earth 2 and Earth 1 was not featured in Who’s Who. My dad did write up the text for a Xum’s Who entry for the Earth One Giganta based on her Silver Age appearances. Maybe I should get the tracing paper out (like I did for Ace the Bathound) to make an actual entry?

    1. This is just one fan’s vote, but yes, Isamu! That sounds like an excellent idea! And thanks for the interesting info as always.

  6. Another great episode from another issue I had back in the day!

    Hearing you discuss it brought it back in my mind even before looking at the gallery post. In particular, the panel with Giganta crushing on Grodd went right to my mind, sign of a great and surprisingly memorable story.

    It is fascinating that Giganta was brought back here but ENB was a font of DC knowledge.

  7. Cheers for another super friendly episode! I was so pleased that Ryan enjoyed the book, those hardcover editions would make a great gift for Rhys, or his school library when he moves up from pre-school.

    This was a wonderful issue, just pure fun. I can’t get enough of the classic Grodd (yep, ‘Force of Mind’ was a weird way describe mental push powers’). As for Giganta, before this issue I’d seen her only in the Villainy Inc Wonder Woman reprint in the Adventure Comics 100-Page Super Spectacular, she was so much more interesting as a former gorilla strong girl than as a giant. Well, apart from when Gail Simone was writing her in All-New Atom.

    Rob, as you asked, a plait is the proper name for a pigtail!

    * Can anyone see that name without singing ‘the space age ro-bot’?
    * * Is anyone doing a podcast on those books, it seems a natural subject for a limited run show?

  8. Nice to hear Ryan “Found His Joy” in the pages of Super Friends. The older I get, the more I wish the DC characters were fully kept in a kid-friendly stasis. The Bronze Age and the majority of the DCAU are about as “adult” as I think these characters really need to get.

    It is indeed interesting that Giganta didn’t get more play in the Bronze Age, especially since she also appeared on The Legends of the Super Heroes TV specials. Her super-growth powers were an invention of the Super Friends TV series, as her previous gimmick was just being a super strong woman evolved from an ape. I guess someone at HB saw her in a pile of characters, noted the name and thought “Hey, 50-Foot Woman”.

    The animated Justice League and JLU continued the notion of the Grood/Giganta romance, where she is once again a mutated ape, but has the size-changing powers.

    And yes, all those butts! I remember getting this comic off the stand and feeling like I shouldn’t be looking at it! Like I was going to get in trouble if my Mom saw what was inside! Of course I’d already seen a naked Black Canary fighting a werewolf in an earlier World’s Finest issue, so I should have been used to “soft core” DC by now! 😉

    Speaking of which, Robin giving Superman grief is probably ENB’s nod to all those classic World’s Finest adventures the two shared. Robin would feel perfectly comfortable poking the Man of Steel in the chest. I always liked it when writers touched on the fact that Robin grew up around Superman almost as much as Batman! Heck, Wolfman and Perez even worked that in to Dick picking the Nightwing name, since Superman had used that alias in Kandor.

    Fun discussion about a great comic!

  9. Great episode as always. I distinctly remember this issue – and still have it. It’s not in the greatest shape because I got it right before a long car ride with my parents, so I probably read it 20 times through and and smudged it with chocolate from my Tastykakes. That aside, it was my introduction to Gorilla City and Giganta. That panel of Giganta pining for Grodd while he laments her being a hideous human should be a pop art wall mural. Fantastic. It’s a little disturbing the alarming amount of gorillas that Superman punched out. The entire Gorilla City military is going to be in concussion protocol for a couple weeks. Getting back to Grodd, I always appreciate a villain layer adorned with a nice fruit bowl. It shows your henchmen and enemies alike that you’re not just about destroying the world, you also want to eat right. Good for you, Grodd. Hopefully your brain isn’t a slurpee after Superman punched the hell out of you.

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