Friday Night Fights: One Panel of Pain - Round 12: Little Things Hurt A Lot


Well, it's our final round of One Panel of Pain. Many of my fellow contestants are undoubtedly planning to go big for our grand finale.

Me? I'm going in the opposite direction.

Tonight's round focuses on the original shrinking superhero of comics. Before Ray Palmer, Hank and Janet Pym, Scott and Cassie Lang, Salu Digby, Adam Cray, Jay Abrams, the Ritas (Farr and DeMara), Stacy Taglia, Ryan Choi, and Eric O'Grady, there was Darrell Dane, a.k.a. Doll Man.

Here we see the Diminutive Daredevil practicing his Moe Howard impression, with two-bit hood Tippy Graham standing in for Curly. The image above comes from Quality Comics' Doll Man Quarterly 16 (1948), from the story "Death Is My Hobby", drawn by John Spranger.

(The thing that always cracked me up about Doll Man's early stories is that he always gets described in articles as a six-inch-tall superhero, but, as you can see above, apparently nobody ever told the series' artists this little detail, because practically every golden age panel I've seen has D.M. being anywhere from 1 foot to 2 feet tall. I've even seen panels where he looks about 3 feet tall.)


Spacebooger knows it's the little guys you've got to watch out for.