{"id":550,"date":"2005-12-02T22:04:00","date_gmt":"2005-12-02T22:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/2005\/12\/02\/challengers-of-the-unknown-78\/"},"modified":"2005-12-02T22:04:00","modified_gmt":"2005-12-02T22:04:00","slug":"challengers-of-the-unknown-78","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/archives\/550","title":{"rendered":"Challengers of the Unknown #78 [1973]"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This was the first issue of CHALLENGERS in two years when it came out, and reprints two stories from 1959, although changing the Challs jumpsuits from the original purple to a red\/yellow combination.<\/p>\n<p>First up, &#8220;The Isle of No Return&#8221;, a 12-page Kirby\/Wood story from CotU #7.  Investigating a thief using advanced scientific devices.  They follow him to an island (with June along as a stowaway), and find out that the thief has even more devices, stolen from a now dead reclusive scientist, including a device which shrinks the Challs.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center\"><a href=\"\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2005\/12\/cu78.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-1996\" title=\"cu78\" src=\"\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2005\/12\/cu78.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"698\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2005\/12\/cu78.jpg 600w, https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/8\/2005\/12\/cu78-206x300.jpg 206w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Fortunately June is able to find them, and with some help from a pet parrot and the late scientist&#8217;s own safeguards they manage to defeat him.<\/p>\n<p>Next is &#8220;The Sorceress of Forbidden Valley&#8221;, also Kirby\/Wood, a 10-pager from CotU #6.  This time June is flying through a storm and is forced to make a crash-landing on a mysterious island.  The Challs go looking for her, and find her with magical powers and under the control of a criminal who had found a hidden city.  Fortunately they&#8217;re able to escape.<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t think the half-issue stories for the Challengers are as good as the full issue stories, they all seem to end kind of abruptly, but they do give Kirby a good chance to draw various scenes, like a hidden city and a lab packed with scientific wonders.<\/p>\n<p>The cover is also reprinted from CotU #7, with a few minor modifications, and the splash page is a reprint of the Kirby\/Stein introduction to the team that appeared in CotU #1 (1958).<\/p>\n<p>Published 1973<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This was the first issue of CHALLENGERS in two years when it came out, and reprints two stories from 1959, although changing the Challs jumpsuits from the original purple to a red\/yellow combination. First up, &#8220;The Isle of No Return&#8221;, a 12-page Kirby\/Wood story from CotU #7. Investigating a thief using advanced scientific devices. They [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genre","category-superhero"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kirbymuseum.org\/blogs\/kirby\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}