They were two of the most underplayed “superheroes” of the Silver Age.
Two South Dakota Highway Patrolmen, Jim Boone and Bob Colby, were telepathically linked to each other. Such was the full extent of their powers.
By the way, those same low-key powers of limited telepathy were shared by Charlton’s one-shot Tyro Team in Charlton Premiere 1 (Sept. 1967).
Recurring characters in DC’s Strange Adventures, the highway patrolmen had been granted their telepathic powers by Klee Pan of Klaramar, an atom-sized planet existing on the surface of Saturn (The Face-Hunter from Saturn!, Strange Adventures 124, Jan. 1961).
“All across the Earth, giant representations of faces, like the granite sculptures of Mount Rushmore and the stone faces on Easter Island, are being stolen by an alien spacecraft,” recalled Mike W. Barr in TwoMorrows’ Silver Age Sci-Fi Companion.
That kind of monumental theft business happened more often than one might imagine in DC Comics. Both Brainiac and the other alien villain in World’s Finest 110 pulled the same trick.
In the first adventure, the police officers aid Klee Pan in his quest to find a stone face in which the evil Chan Yull had planted a bomb that will obliterate the planet.
“The Faceless Creature returned in Strange Adventures 142 (July 1962),” noted comics historian Pat Curley. “Chan Yull has learned that his prior plot to destroy the Solar System failed, partially because of the efforts of the two South Dakota highway patrolmen. So he creates a new bomb and uses them as the triggers.
“But when they arrive the bomb does not explode. It turns out that Jim and Bob were given the power of telepathy by Klee Pan, and so they had ordered each other not to explode the bomb. Klee Pan sends them back to Earth with weapons that subdue Chan Yull and send him back to Klaramar.”
Chan Yull, who would return for revenge in Strange Adventures 153 (June 1963), was always a formidable foe. In addition to telepathy, the faceless aliens’ powers included size alteration, super senses, super strength, flight, mind control, electrokinesis, pyrokinesis, hydrokinesis and absorbing replication, described as “…the uncanny racial ability to absorb the material or energetic properties of anything his species touch and project those properties explosively.”
“One of DC’s major trends of the late 1950s and early 1960s was to add continuing characters to the magazines that did not already feature them,” Curley observed.
“The war books picked up Sgt. Rock, Jeb Stuart, Gunner and Sarge, etc., while Mystery in Space added Adam Strange, Tales of the Unexpected featured Space Ranger, and House of Secrets highlighted Mark Merlin.
“Strange Adventures, edited by Julius Schwartz, tried something different. Instead of adding one feature which appeared every issue, Schwartz rotated several recurring features: Star Hawkins, The Atomic Knights and The Space Museum appeared regularly over the course of several years.
“In addition, particularly successful one-shot characters were often brought back. The Faceless Creature was probably the most notable as he appeared on the covers of three issues over the course of as many years. Those of you who are fans of the Brave and the Bold show on Cartoon Network may recognize him as the Hunter who served as Starro’s herald in a two-part episode of that series.”
The design of the Faceless Creatures really grabbed me as a kid. They were orange (my favorite color then), huge (what child doesn’t like giants?) and fascinatingly blank-faced. The mysterious element of a featureless face always intrigued me, whether on these Klaramarians or on Marvel’s Human Torch or DC’s Negative Man.
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