Is Doctor Hormone the Strangest Superhero Ever?
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- Опубликовано: 27 сен 2024
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Dell Comics introduced one of the Golden Age's strangest comic book heroes in the pages of Popular Comics issue 54: Doctor Hormone. He ran around with his granddaughter, using his strange science to turn babies and children into 25 year old men, sent off to war. Then he started turning them into human-animal hybrids. And he was supposed to be the good guy!
Comic Tropes have taught me that no matter how edgy and weird comic writers got in the 1980s and onwards, they've still got nothing on the Golden Age creators.
Yeah. That "so-called Granddaughter" line shows that the author was not being naive about the medium and its tropes. Fredric Wertham wasn't the first person to raise their eyebrow at the child sidekick in adventure comics.
To be fair about "so-called granddaughter", Doctor Hormone would look suspiciously young to have a granddaughter given he'd seem like someone in his mid-20s.
I think a lot of people would be skeptical if someone in their mid 20s said that they had a granddaughter. Granted it’s not impossible, but it’s very unlikely.
@@arnahunas4048 in this day an age, dr. hormone would be seen as a rick & morty ripoff
17:21 it is shown in text that he is actually 75 years old, I'm assuming his "hormones" keep him young.
I think it's just a case of him sampling his own product. He's figured out how to advance aging in babies so it seems he's been able to slow his own aging
@@klaykid117 It's shown in the first part: he was old and dying, then reversed his ageing and health to 25. Of course, while the reader would know that, that's not necessarily the case for the people meeting Dr. Hormone, to whom he'd just seem like a guy in his mid-20s.
To be fair, children who turn into adults still have the brains of children. So, if an old person was de-aged, they'd still have the mind of an old person. Case in point: Doctor Hormone was an old man and he forgot to turn his machine on. So, turning kids into adults was a safer bet.
How is the brain the only thing that doesn't change? None of this makes any sense.
@@juststatedtheobvious9633even if you physically age or de-age a brain it won't give it more or less experiences
Old people would realize they had a lot to live for, especially since they'd just been given a second chance. Kids aged into adult bodies would, sadly, not realize how dangerous being a soldier is, or how much they have to lose. It's the reason real soldiers tend to be conscripted as young as possible.
@@CAMSLAYER13 If you de-age a brain, you're creating new cells to replace those lost. There's no way that happens without magic. But what kind of magic? If it's restoring your brain to a previous state, then you're also losing connections, so your brain can be young and flexible.
And there's evidence for this interpretation, as twenty five is as young as he can be, and still have a brain capable of reasonably mature function. Then again, he behaves like a dementia patient and a sadistic child, so who knows?
I think that it does affect the brain, it's just that the scoot having a holder brain doesn't change that they have the life experience, knowledge, and emotional maturity of childrens.
You could never get a superhero like this nowadays who inhumanely experimented on people to turn them into animal hybrids and fights an arch-nemesis named ASSinoff. This is why I love Golden Age comics.
It would be one of those cringe "look kids, we can make edgy jokes, are we on fleek yet?" type of comics that thinks it's the next Rick and Morty. The sincerity of Golden Age comics while still being certifiably insane is what gives them charm.
Yeah the bumbling wantoness of the thing is what amazes me. Like IDK maybe it was good intentioned like... Do they just really not know what to write for kids or are they doing this on purpose? I mean at least the eighties had the excuse of being coked out of their box when they were doing the insane shit we come across from their era.
MAYBE if you had someone like Gail Simone or Matt Fraction writing a comic about Count Nefaria as an anti-hero.
that was the plot of Guardians of the Galaxy 3 lol
Ass-inoff? 😂
GRANT MORRISON NEEDS TO REVIVE THIS CHARACTER! Btw, Chris, another great episode. The research could've left a lesser man bonkers!
Oh, HELL, yes!
YES. theyre about the only writer i would trust with this character lol
Grant Morrison popped into my head as I watching this video.
Pretty sure the general's name isn't supposed to be "Battle-Sky", but "Battlesky", i.e. combining the English word battle with the common Slavic name suffix -ski/sky. The scientist guy has a similar punny name with Smartinoff, combining smart with another common suffix, which also ends up sounding like "smart enough".
I'm pretty sure you're correct. I think it was even spelled "Battleski" (sometimes) in the comic panels shown in this video.
I'm reminded of the Spirou & Fantasio story with the mushroom-based metal-softening gas, "Métomol", which they use to render tanks and bombers useless and prevent a war.
Significantly less war crimes in Spirou though.
Disabling a tank, using nothing more than a Tommy Gun... and even having the nerve to try it.
That is some next level badassery.
Clearly Fantasio and Sprirou come from the same school of journalism as Tintin.
I'm surprised to read these names here. I used to read these albums when I was young. And the big Dupuis compilation of "le journal de Spirou" which had all the new albums from different authors who were edited by Dupuis released in different parts. There was comics like Lucky Luke, the Smurfs, and many other. I don't think the other were popular enough to be translated in english. I had them in my native language, which is french.
@@SurnaturalM Gaston was one of my faves
You had me at "Babies turned to men who were immediately send to war"
I LOVE The video's thumbnail!
"I feel a terrible new strength in my body!"
*Doctor METH to the rescue!*
I instinctively know this will be an instant Comic Tropes Classic.
That was my exact thought 😂
@@rodrigomarcondes5857especially the kind that jam in as many words as possible into a word bubble.
My favorite Comic Tropes episodes is when Chris covers crazy golden age comics, it's just so fascinating
Stalin would totally call the guy with donkey ears "Assinov." Humiliating his subordinates is quite on-brand.
Strange golden age heroes is my favorite series on this channel
Mine too. I'd like to see a Comic Tropes episode devoted to The Deacon and Mickey (from Holyoke's Cat-Man Comics).
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Personally I like the idea of villains who base their motifs on their names, and I think Dr Hormone qualifies.
Personally I would like to see a comic featuring Dr Buttstuff, but perhaps I shouldn't mention it.
Sounds like gay hentai. lol
"This is all highly irregular!" - leader while against the wall.
Insane! This story needs to be immediately optioned into a major motion picture or premium streaming on-going series.
Doctor Hormone is in the public domain!
Dr. Hormone is what my HRT provider is listed as in my phone
Your pfp is problematic, we don't need a flag. You are special for being you, not because you transitioned, never forget that
@@Jiub_SNif she wants to show the trans lesbian flag, let her. Just because you personally don’t like the flag doesn’t mean it’s “problematic”
@@Jiub_SN why are you making a stink about someone being proud of their identity?
doctor hormone would be a banging stage name for a trans drag artist someone’s gotta snatch it
@@Jiub_SNeat doodoo fool
I’ve been low key obsessed with Doctor Hormone for several years since reading the League of Regrettable Superheroes.
I interpret Hormone as an ethnic name badly translated or transcribed. If the hormone gas doesn’t change the mental state of the subject, that would account for both Doctor Hormone’s forgetfulness and the choice of mentally fresh Boy Scouts as cannon fodder.
The last issue is crazy but at the same time capitulates the tendency of Golfen Age heroes to gain superpowers. From inventor to crazier inventor to superpower to meeting God a la the Spectre all in one issue!
I’ve been working on Golden/Silver Age Dell Expanded Universe. Doctor Hormone is at the center of it.
How do I join your cult?
I like how this character is exactly what everyone who wants to capture Spiderman's blood wants to be. A guy who can create a whole army of super powered bug men would have complete military dominance over the world. It's fun thinking about what history would look like with technology like that proliferating.
That's a big zipper, my man.
That one "hormone" dad joke... every time after that you said "Dr. Hormone", I giggled a little. Dang it, Chris! People are looking at me funny!
A country using hormones to make kids grow faster so they can be used to for military purposes sounds like something from a grim-dark scifi setting like Warhammer. In fact, i'm pretty sure that's part of Gears Of War lore, except for girls.
this is just dr strange after he looks at scarlet witch in the shower by accident
"By accident" lol
3:39 An idea that would warrant peace without weapons would indeed be priceless.
Honestly, this would be a really fun one for someone to dig up and spit shine like so many other of these golden age comics that get the same.
Definitely a lot of blanks to fill in, but I can see a protracted arc leading to Jane taking the mantle while learning her grandfather was actually an insane, stumbling geneticist who had all of the skill but somehow none of the knowledge.
Love that you give the spotlight to goofy old stuff like this, chances are I'd never have known about Dr. Hormone otherwise, and it helps keep these comics that much more alive...or at the very least keeps them from total obscurity for the rest of us 😂
Another great episode!
But I have to admit, I'm mesmerized by that GIANT Zipper! 😂
That name must have caused some problems when he was a teenager:
“Hello, Sir. I’m here to pick up your daughter for our date.”
“What’s your name, kid?”
“Johnny Hormone.”
“Beat it. And stay away from my daughter!”
I think Doctor might actually be his first name. Which wouldn't make finding dates any easier.
Took me second to realize that by "Doctor Hormone is his actual name" Chris did'nt just meant his family name is Hormone' like, say, Doctor Strange, but that his given name is Doctor.
I ❤️ those crazy Golden Age comics. 😊 This seems to be right up there with the best of Fletcher Hanks’s Stardust and Fantomah comics stories.
Man, when it comes to bedside manner, Dr. Hormone makes Reed Richards look like kindly old Mr. Wizard!
you're almost rooting for dr hormone for how anti-hero he feels like
The girl could complain, and questions his ethics for comedic value.
Question his ethics? I think she's the one leading him on! He's too scared to take his youth formula, so she pours it down his throat, then she's there with him every step of the way. I don't think the hormone pill fell too far from the tree when it comes to Jane.
Dr Hormone, OMG. If you go back to create comic books and get inspired by the golden age crazy names, create a female team in Captain Carrot and the Amazing Zoo Crew's style and call the Falopian Furies.
"you can battle try again, brother." 😂
I think the kangaroo joke might just be that kangaroos have pouches/pockets?
Yeah, that seemed pretty obvious to me.
"But we've never seen a hero who straight up commits war crimes with science" You're clearly not up to date on X-Men. Dark Beast is no longer the darkest Beast.
Where would we be without Chris showing us these weird Golden Age gems? Def up there as ome of my fav series on the channel
This just might be your Golden Age masterpiece, Chris!!
I have a hunch you're mispronouncing Battlesky. While Battle Sky sounds cooler (kinda like an early version if Skywalker), I think their made up country is supposed to be a WW2 era Poland stand in... so it might be intended to sound like "Battleskee". 🤷♂️
wouldn't that be if it was written "battleski"?
@@monterrang1 In an ideal world, yes. I think were expecting too much competence of the creators of Dr. Hormone.
Or Batt-less-key?
@@monterrang1It IS spelled "Battleski" sometimes. And "Eurasia" is sometimes "Urasia".
Your objective critique on comics is brilliant. In the early eighties, out in rural Minnesota, an older neighbor boy shared a large box of old comic books with me. As a a six year old I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. So much color, art, things I had never seen anything like it before. I asked him if I could have them. He said no immediately. So began my years long obsession to recreate that euphoria for enjoying comic books. I still enjoy comic books in my way. I don’t think it’s a brand or marketing campaign that hooked me at that time. It was just that these things exist. What a great way to get away for a few minutes.
By the way, to me, this is a top three Comic Tropes production. Gold.
man you cover some weird stuff at your youtube and I love every minute of it. I get to see stuff even I didnt know about and Ive been in comics for 4 decades
Can I use the phrase "Scientific Chemicals" freely or do I have to pay royalties now?
18:08 It's a joke about how kangaroos have pouches.
Thanks for all your hard work and for helping me learn about all this cool comic history!
The production quality on your videos lately has been god damn fantastic.
I absolutely LOVE these crazier episodes. Great work, and thanks for sharing the fantastic exploits of Dr Hormone!
You outdid yourself on this episode! I'm annoyed it took me this long to get to it! Fantastic work as always!
"where we look at really bad schlocky movies"
WELP, I'm sold
I can't believe Dr. Hormone didn't take off... maybe he needed a partner like Dr. Neuron 🤔
You just can't imagine what was out there in the Golden Age of comics. The outrageousness never seems to end. Great episode.What about calling the other show Comic Tropes and Beyond...
I love these wacky 1940’s comics and your take on them is super entertaining Chris ☺️😂
Thanks for that hallucinatory ride through the world of Doc Hormone
That was WILD! lol
Oh no - we must never forget 711, but you already talked about THAT one! 🤣🤣
We need more videos like this, Chris.
Playing around with the sounds in "Hormone" can get you "Moreau."
Man, I love what you do. I can't get enough of these comics and your narration.👍👍
This is the first video I saw of this youtube and I will say, I like it and will follow, I am not really replying to tell people, I am typing this so I can know what the first video I saw that made me want to follow you. Keep up the work!
Obviously, it is very well researched and scientific accurate.
The funny thing is: Around the time the comics are set in there was a guy called Hitler who enabled by his personal physician applied hormons (often "harvested" under questionable conditions from animals such as bulls) to himself in pretty much the same spirit as the comic's doctor does to others but probably with even less expertise, driven by the same weird zeitgeist phenomenon of taking a new discovery or recent breakthrough in a just emerging field and equating it with what almost amounts to omnipotence.
It happened with both radiation and nuclear power as destinct "zeitgeist waves", with electricity, with the airplane, with space flight, with computing and recently more specific decentralized AI.
All brought batshit crazy ideas, approaches and ill advised attempts with them alongside a more grounded approach by associated key researchers themselves in both reality and fiction/pop culture initially.
Based on that intro alone I could tell this comic was gonna be ridiculous. Great video as always!
7:03 - MFF 2019 Variety Show! I was literally waiting to go onstage during this set (ukulele accompanist). Wish I remembered their names.
Wait a minute! Why are my hormones tingling?
I suppose the $25 million is supposed to be for a contract to produce whatever the country needed for their defense effort, not just for the idea.
It's a kids' comic in the 40's; there were probably some kids who wanted to help by going to war, without really understanding what that meant. Turning kids into adults would be wish fulfillment for that group.
Chemical warfare was banned, but other authors suggested new chemicals could be used to end wars peacefully; in the movie "Things to Come," scientists use a sleep agent to stop a war, only killing one person. (The warlord, luckily.)
This was a fun episode that Austin Powers cut in was perfect 😂
I feel like it'd be "bat-el-ES-kee", not "BAT-el-sky".
So glad to see a new Golden Age Tropes episode!
"You can battle try again" is a beautiful and hilarious line.
This video is so awesome! I don't know where you find these old comics, but your descriptions of the story (and the art scans) are hilarious! Only seven issues, but what a saga.
Oh, Doctor Hormone. I have so many thoughts... One is that this is a pretty clear instance of an antihero, even if the concept hadn't been formally developed in 1940. There were other characters of the time like The Spectre who did truly horrific things, but were morally acceptable because they did them to bad men. Here we have a character who would be the mad scientist in most stories, who becomes the hero because he uses his mad science to defend peaceful nations from aggression. You can see the author really pushing the boundary too, with Doctor Hormone doing increasingly terrible things like control the thoughts of invading soldiers, and even turn his allies into rats, locusts and fleas. But it's all okay in the end, because those things were done for a good cause.
And it's kind of fascinating that Doctor Hormone did all this stuff in what was basically his second life. He had a youth hormone, but was afraid to take it until on his death bed. After that he's afraid of nothing. It makes me wonder if it's just the natural confidence that comes from being young and vigorous again, or if he made some other changes to the formula... That might also explain why absolutely nothing fazes Jane.
I always heard to make a hormone was just not pay her……
Who else could tell this was a ComicTropes post without even looking?
i find it amazing that Dr Hormone could take on the Europe and Asia super-continent!
Doctor Hormone, Doctor Hormone. Does whatever an Hormone… cone?
Hones whatever a hormone condones?
I hope Doctor Hormone is in the public domain
Comic Tropes - "We've never seen a super hero who committed war crimes with science"
Mr. Fantastic - "watch over the negative zone prison for me, I'll be right back"
Im guessing the Kangaroo pick-pocket joke is a kangaroo pouch reference,
because he looked distressed over being turned into another animal, the guy made a joke like if the distress came from someone touching his newly formed pocket
As for the dog, I think its a pun on him being anemic, but becoming a "blood"hound
The joke is "you DON'T pay her"
A very fun episode, nevertheless!
I like the idea of not knowing the whole story. My friends and I used to draw what happened next for stuff like that. Movies and everything
I think we all remember the panel where he's on his deathbed, and his granddaughter leans in close and says "Grandpa, you must tell me the secret. How do you make a hormone?" And he whispers, barely audible, "pay her".
I notice that Battlesky's name is spelled Battleski on this page 17:16 would be an interesting comment
One of the better episodes I’ve seen in awhile. not the back the other episodes are bad in anyway I just really enjoyed the editing and the fun you were having this time
What a crazy character and storyline! Think of it as a parody, ignoring it was a real comic and real thoughts behind it, and it would be funny.
At the very least....Dr. Hormone added a new word to my vocabulary...."disport."
I need to lie down in a darkened room after listening to this!.... Oh, my lord! It has made my head hurt!
You always present such interesting stories with these golden age characters Chris!
Beautifully bizarre and I love it!
Skidmark sounds like a code name with a story behind it 🙂
He's in the great book The League of Regrettable Superheroes . Highly recommended book as is The League of Regrettable Supervillains.
Hey there. Here is an idea for a video topic that would be completely up your alley: Agents of Atlas. During the period between the gold and silver age (between Timely and Marvel) Atlas Comics had a few superhero-esque characters. The characters debuted as a team in "What If" in 1979 and in 2006 they brought into the main universe with miniseries. I have done a search on RUclips and there really isn't any good videos on this team.
This need a Netflix adaptation.
Btw by reading the title it immediately reminded of Ivankov and how he uses hormones to change sex of people.
His arch nemesis is probably the evil and voice shapeshifter : Private Puberty!
With all that craziness I think I need a gentle nap too.
I don't know if anyone else already said it, but when the Flea-Men pick up the train, they only carry the engine over, the text even says as much.
Yet the previous panel shows the engine pulling passenger cars, so it'd be reasonable to assume there where many other people on the train, and they all plummeted to their death from the broken bridge.
Instead of saving the train and everyone on it, Dr. Hormone just saved his own skin and left everyone else to die due to the assassins after him specifically.
Ha! This one is funny. Good work Chris 😊
I like the weird ones!
He may be a strange Superhero, but what a grandfather. lol
Gotta say unlike so many golden age comics that talked down to their readers & held their hands, both showing what happens, as well as putting it jn the dialog & captions....it looks like this one did the opposite. The reader had to pay full attention.
Not sure if anyone's mentioned this yet, but I'm guessing the reference to the kangaroo being a pickpocket has to do with the fact that kangaroos have their own pockets (aka, their pouch).
"We never seen a superhero who commits war crimes with science"....
**The Illuminati enter the chat**
Yo Chris, you do many things good, but you are best at this golden age wacky comics. Too bad there is no more "drink when trope appears" episodes.
Wait he had a chemical agent that could have ended the war before it began? He just thought the better idea was turning babies into adult men to die on the battlefield needlessly!?
There may be a few logic gaps in this story.
@@ComicTropes If the instagrown babies still have baby brains, maybe Dr. Hormone had dementia before he was de-aged.
He's just like Synthesizer Patel, who loves synthesizers so much, he changed his name to Synthesizer.
(If you know, you know)