Dates
- Cover date
- April-May 1963
- On sale
- February 14, 1963
- Pages
- 36
Editions and covers
- Original editionSource ↗
Creators
Stories
- The Man Who Saved the Challenger's Lives, Chapter 1 · 6.67 pages
Wilfred Clayton insists he saved the Challengers' lives at their plane crash and they all owe him. Each thinks back to their lives before they became Challengers. Rocky was wrestling a brute named Barton and, despite the mob drugging his water, he won the match. Prof was a spoiled heir with a new yacht who sideswiped a work boat containing his hero, Sir Lawrence Revere, slaving to salvage a statue for local fishermen, and in helping him Prof starts to grow up.
- Chapter 2: The Secret from the Challengers' Past · 5.67 pages
Before they all met, Red worked on a radio tower for President Domingo in a South American country where a kid asks Red to stop the dictator's evil plans, teaching Red true heroism. Ace ran a tiny air service delivering nitro to prospectors and when a crate breaks loose he heroically delivered the cargo. Flying to their appearance on the Heroes TV show, Ace's plane crashes and they become men "living on borrowed time." Clayton claims that what they don't know is that he saved their lives after the crash. In return, he wants them to go to South America and assemble a giant statue for him.
- Chapter 3: The Warrior from 1,000 A.D. · 11.67 pages
In South America, trying to assemble the statue, Prof and Red are attacked by its flying arm and sword. They are able to reattach the arm, but realize the statue is actually a robot. Clayton binds and imprisons them along with Dr. Steuben, the robot's inventor. Meanwhile, Ace and Rocky secure the robot's other arm and are about to reattach it to the statue, when it seemingly goes crazy and batters the statue. Ace had reprogrammed the arm to destroy the robot because he realized there was one detail Clayton had gotten wrong in the Challengers' origin story.
Reprinted in
Showcase Presents Challengers of the Unknown (2006)