Hee! Ah just *love* Fred Hembeck! And Ah would like to thank Fred and Proud Robot productions for this strip:):) It's twenty years old and all, but Ah think it's still funny! *snarf* How about ya'll??

Here's what Fred had to say about the strip:):)

This one's a fairly obvious pun, based on the character's name. The guy in red is named 'Mon-El', you see. Get it? Days of the week? Ok, ok....

On to business, then - time to make with the funny. Let's go right to the origin.

I said, 'ORIGIN', laughing boy, not....never mind. Get your mind out of the gutter. You have to forgive the audience, folks - paint a lass blue and they get all sorts of ideas.

Where was I? Oh, right, origin story. Superboy:

*discovers rocket ship crashing to Earth; *rescues the amnesiac pilot; *assumes (based on flimsy circumstantial evidence - and not a Congressional sub-committee in sight!) that said pilot must be his older brother; * names the guy 'Mon-El' (based on the day of the week he crashed, and the Kryptonian family name); *grows suspicious of Mon-El based on even more flimsy circumstantial evidence (there's more of that here than an entire season's worth of 'Three's Company'!); and, *exposes him to massive quantities of lead as part of a scheme to expose the suspected fraud.

Bad news - y'all know what kryptonite does to Superboy? Well, that's what lead does to Mon-El's people.

Whoops.

So, what do we have for the no-longer-amnesiac kid from Daxam, Johnny DC?

Well, Mon-El, behind Curtain Number 1, we have certain death, and behind Curtain Number 2, we have a thousand-year banishment to the Phantom Zone, where you can share a ghost-like existence with hundreds of Kryptonian criminals, while Superboy gets to grow up and have a wonderful life dating women with the initials L.L.!

Ain't old comic books a blast?

My brother tells me that "MONEL metal" is a Nickel-Copper-Iron alloy known for its strength and corrosion resistance. Maybe Mort Weisinger was an amateur metallurgist....

And here's more from the pen and evil, twisted mind of Lev Kallem!

Visit his LEV-PICS Site, today!

Lev Pics!