This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post from Balladeer’s Blog looks at DC’s team of adventurers called the Challengers of the Unknown.
SHOWCASE Vol 1 #6 (Feb 1957)
Title: The Secret of the Sorcerer’s Box
Villains: Morelian and creatures from Pandora’s Box
Synopsis: In this origin story, wrestling champion Rocky Davis, scuba diving marine biologist Professor Walter Haley, war veteran jet pilot Ace Morgan and circus daredevil Red Ryan miraculously survive a plane crash. Deciding that the odds of them surviving were so low they consider themselves living on borrowed time. They devote themselves to challenging the unknown.
After attracting publicity over some minor escapades, the Challengers of the Unknown are hired by millionaire Mr. Morelian to open Pandora’s Box and survive. Our heroes take the box to a remote desert island and open the relic.
The Challengers defeat the menaces unleashed by Pandora’s Box – a giant lizard, a miniature sun, a giant stone warrior and more. With the dangers eliminated, Morelian steals the ring he wanted from the box and flees, only to die when his escape craft crashes. Continue reading
JUNGLE ACTION Vol 2 #19 (Jan 1976) 
EERIE #62 (Jan 1975) 
MARVEL PREMIERE Vol 1 #41 (Apr 1978) 
The crew members we meet in this debut story – 1. Captain Jordan Shaw (right), a decent man appalled at the way the Six have chosen to play God with who gets to escape and who gets left behind to die. He cooperates just so he and his wife can survive, so he bitterly knows he is no better than the oligarchs in the end. 
And 5. Phaedra (left), a mutant with telekinetic and telepathic abilities. She and Earth’s hundreds of other mutants live in prison camps at the Six’s command while their abilities are probed. They are all forced to wear facial tattoos to prevent them hiding their mutant status. 
CONAN THE BARBARIAN Vol 1 #52 (Jul 1975) 
Conan finds the Ring of the Black Shadow, thus animating a huge statue of the Scorpion God which guards the ring to keep it out of human hands. Our hero fights the statue and renders it inert again with a sword through its “brain.”
MR. A 
MARVEL PREMIERE Vol 1 #31 (Aug 1976) 
Superstitious people in Liberty, NM get covert glimpses of the creature and decide to raid the Pace ranch to destroy Woodgod and any other such “monsters” being created there. David and Ellen are shot to death in the attack but our main character is super-strong and invulnerable, so he survives being shot multiple times.
TEEN TITANS Vol 1 #44 (Nov 1976) 
FLASH COMICS Vol 1 #1 (Jan 1940) 
Jay’s love interest Joan Williams asks him to find her father, who has been abducted by enemy spies called the Faultless Four and led by the French Sir Satan. The Frenchman and his British, Russian and Slavic colleagues want her retired major father to reveal the secrets of America’s new Atomic Bombarder.
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