And keep in mind that when I say “unbelievable”, I don’t mean “wow, it’s so amazing!” I mean that it’s not believable that someone would write a story like this. But let’s move on.
See if you can follow the arbitrary events from this point. Baby Johnny is stolen from his parents, his hair and skin dyed a different color. He’s taken to a fictional country, put through a ritual that imbues him with some kind of magical power that hasn’t been revealed yet.
Then a war breaks out, some random woman is told to keep an eye on him, and Johnny just hops on a boat unseen somehow. That’s where we are now.
Dude, you think this kid knows who Columbus is? Know your audience, funny man!
Wait, hold on, they only dyed his FACE? And whoa whoa whoa, why are you looking under his SHIRT?
The opening sentence makes everything that follows it sound like they’re considered bad things.
That’s Johnny’s father there, by the way. What kind of stupid coincidence put these two back together? This is what I’m talking about with this story.
Did… Johnny’s hair just magically change color?
Okay, I don’t have time to unpack that guy’s casual assertion, but please, have at it, Dear Reader.
What could the motto be? “Don’t go a-rowin’ when this belt buckle’s a-glowin'”? Also, don’t his parents change his outfit? Thirdly, did they not even wonder where the hell it CAME from?
You can’t tell me that this guy isn’t the same dude from the Best of Kansas album cover:
Look! He’s even warning us about the boat that took Johnny away from them!
Okay. So these guys are trying to find a single blond kid in the entirety of America. Before GPS, before cellphones, before DNA matching. They don’t even have a tracking fob or spell on him. Let’s see how long it takes them!
Oop, we’ve timeskipped ahead. Johnny is now 23 YEARS OLD. And I’ll tell you right now that it doesn’t matter. It never comes up and never plays into the story. So why not just kidnap this dude at this age and give him the ritual? What damned difference did it make that he was stolen as a child? WHAT WAS THE POINT OF ANY OF THAT?
Oh, also: whenever Johnny says “Say you”, it activates his magical power. WHYYYYYYYYY
And his power is the ability to make people do whatever he says. Good thing this was the 50s (or whenever the hell this takes place), ’cause I can think of at least one other thing people say that would be horrible if he made someone do it. And just like here, it has a word that sounds like “duck” in it.
Okay, so this person’s falling and Johnny says “Stop!” Is that really the first thing you’d say when seeing someone fall like this? But what do I know, ’cause of course it works.
And neither of them comment on the impossibility of it at all. But hey, that last panel: MEET CUTE!
And again, yet another of those statistical impossibilities that runs rampant through this story.
I’M sorry… is that train floating over the ocean?
This department store has a warped sense of value.
In my mind, the writer practiced shoving different people and writing down their reactions until he discovered the perfect ones for this issue.
Note: not “footballs” but “foot balls”.
And Johnny doesn’t know how to punch.
And this just goes to show the era: “say you” must’ve been so common in the parlance that the writer though he was being really clever.
Why was it only his third command that worked? Again: if this had been written today, some physically impossible things would be happening right now.
Really? Not at all concerned about the magically flying people? Not worried about the very laws of physics being toyed with? Johnny not gonna tell this guy to go to Hell? Pfft. Whatever.
Join us on Monday for our final look at Flash Comics #1!
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