The Tragic Tale Of Bee Boy
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- Опубліковано 9 вер 2024
- There have been many characters over the years of DC Comics, so it is inevitable that some will be forgotten. Silver age comics and Otto Binder deliver one such character. Can Lana Lang get a happy outcome for Bee Boy, and will he cure her of her love for Superboy (Clark Kent). It's a tale that seems silly on the surface but it actually far darker. Dive in here on Casually Comics!
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The reason Superboy never found an antidote for Bee-Boy's transformation is because he was too busy NOT finding an antidote for Mon-El's lead poisoning.
wow that's sad and depressing.
bruh
Or not trying to find Kandor a new planet.
No. The editors realized what they had done and buried it before anyone could remember. Bee Boy committed suicide off-camera and nobody attended the funeral.
@@hydrolito that's true and you're right about that
Really getting Sauron vibes with the mad entomologist:
"But with this power, you could have cured my punctured lung!"
"But I don't want to cure punctured lungs, I want to turn people into Bees."
🤣🤣🤣
Sounds like a problem that needs more bees
@@KittSpiken I'd prefer bees that could fetch PINTS.
Suddenly I remembered an episode of Dr. House: "The cardiologist thinks it's the heart, the neurologist thinks it's the brain, the oncologist thinks it's cancer", and in this case, the bee obsessed mad scientist thinks the only solution is to turn a kid into a bee, what a surprise 😅
I want the next Henry Cavill Superman movie to feature Jerry Seinfeld as the grownup Bee Boy, resentful that Superman never bothered to look for an antidote like he promised, and every time Bee Boy makes a possible "bee" pun, they both give side-eye to the camera 😆
Debra Messing can be the grown-up Lana Lang who rediscovers her insect ring after many years and goes on adventures with Cavill.
Ya like Jazz?
Honestly, Jerry Seinfeld is a huge Superman fan, so he would probably have been down for that.
...it had to be Sienfield...
@@JoeOConnellAllNewLana Lang is not a Zionist.
Bee Boy sounds like one of those obscure characters who might show up on Batman: The Brave and the Bold. And probably look cool doing it.
Man, that series ended far too soon.
The last new insect based villain I can think of that appeared in a Batman book was the Bedbug, but he kinda faded away once the New 52 was launched. I don't even think they finished his storyline before that happened
It's Omnipotron.
It's weird that none of them thought to try using the bio-ring that turns people to and fro from insects. You'd think they'd analyze the processes and try to adapt that into a solution.
You know that scientist just wanted to make bee-human hybrid lol
@@CasuallyComics "I don't want to cure cancer! I want to turn people into dinosaurs!"
-- Sauron (The Marvel Mad Scientist, not the LotR Evil Overlord)
It’s DC they never go for obvious solutions
@@SpaceJawa Wasn’t that from a comic where Sauron teamed up with Stegron? Because usually this type of plot is more typical for Stegron.
@@davidgantenbein9362 And before Stegron there was the Lizard where Doctor Curt Connors quickly went from "I'll invent a method for regrowing my arm like how lizards replace their tails!'" to "I'll turn all humans into lizards!"
Leaping lizard logic!
"He feels like he should not bee."
I love it if was intentional but if it wasn't, I doubly love it.
To bee or not to bee.
Reminds me of the old saying: "With friends like these, who needs enemies?"
"Silver Age Lana Lang had the emotional sensitivity of a brick." - still laughing
In the letters columns of subsequent issues of *_Superboy,_* there were letters complaining that Kim hadn't reappeared. Finally, they ran a letter from someone who suggested that Lana could slip her Insect Queen ring onto his finger so he could use it to will his Bee Boy form *_AWAY,_* becoming human again (and presumably, without a punctured lung, or maybe he would assume human form in the lobby of a hospital and get more conventional treatment).
The Editor replied that this was, in fact, what had happened, so everyone could let go their held breath and be happy for Kim, for he was human once more.
An *_EXTREMELY_* weak resolution to the storyline, not even considered worthy of a one-panel appearance of a healthy Kim to recite a hundred-word balloon to explain how he wound up in Smallville walking on two legs, but at least he DID get a resolution, instead of having to rot in his hive until July of 1985.
What issue was this in? I read the issues all the way up to 147 when the pyramid reappeared and saw nothing, but alas not all reprints include the letters columns. (to my eternal sadness lol) So it could have been in one of the ones that didn't have it.
@@CasuallyComics Alas, I sold all of my Silver Age comics some years ago to finance a major project, so I can't dig up that issue myself, but I know that it happened.
Surely someone can document it...?
Love that cover! “Since Lana became Insect Queen, she’s lost all memory of me as Superboy and her past life!”
Really? THAT was your takeaway? It’s all about you?
A punctured lung? Fortunately humans have 2. Let’s get him stabilized and have Lana change to Insect Queen and fly him to the nearest Hospital. Better still, contact Superboy! Wait,never mind that, I’ll just experiment!
Are we sure Otto Binder wasn’t secretly a 5th dimensional imp and these were just the practice years for when Superboy grew up and moved to Metropolis?
Bee-Boy has the sudden urge to drop the most hardcore album of 1966.
Six months after this issue came out, the "Green Hornet" TV series debuted, as a companion to the popular Adam West "Batman" series. The theme song they used for the Green Hornet show was "Flight of the Bumblebee". This melody is from an opera where a prince is turned into a bee boy.
Poor Bee-Boy, he was bee-trayed by science, wrongfully bee-guiled by Lana, plus bee-rated by Superboy, I am bee-wildered, bee-reaved, and even bee-fuddled about his, Kim should have more bee-f with Lana for using her bee-auty to bee-witch him, or Superboy bee-gging him to be bee-tter and then bee-ing bee-lligerent with him, I’m surprised he didn’t go more bee-rzerk. Kim story is bee-fitting of a bee-tter fate, even if they have to re-introduce him into continuity from the bee-ginning, because what he got was unbee-lievable.
Don’t bee t around the bush. Tell us what you really think!😉
All of these sting in the most gut-wrenching way possible.
I see what you did there.
At this point, I'm waiting for the Otto Binder playlist. I love the idea of various insect-themed supervillains with vendettas against Lana Lang. Even more tragic that male bees are really sad things, just there to mate with the queen, so Kim's fixation on Lana just plays into his 'more bee now than man'.
wth Insect Queen needs to make a comeback, I need a whole animated series of Insect Queen. Her abilities is absolutely .... something... I can't look away....
*Instead we get a live-action body horror with Cronenberg effects.*
5:06 "... should not bee."
I see what you did there, Sasha.
I'm pretty sure I know why we never got to see Bee-Boy return. After many years of isolation and never hearing from Super-Boy, or Lana, or his father, or anyone at all, he finally decided to sting some poor animal that was just minding it's own business, thus also killing Bee-Boy in the process. RIP Bee-Boy Kim, you will not be missed.
Justice for Bee Boy?
He should have his own film. We could call it Bee...Film!
He's just a busy-body.
@@euansmith3699 that pun stings.
Depends on his BeeBoy stance. 😬
@@freddyb6105 You have to watch his butt-wiggles to work out what his plans are.
Early in, Lana Lang's "Cheerful Body Horror" is a genre I didn't know needed to not exist!
Wow that story was depressing as hell.
Bee Boy didn't deserve that fate.
And they just dropped it after that is even more heartbreaking.
So I do not encourage self inflicted harm or anything of the sort, but Bee-Boy's case would definately make a strong argument for Dr. Kevorkian's work.
Bee Boy - the one ancestor Animal Man doesn't acknowledge but Bumblebee does.
The best part is that the type of respiratory system that insects have is really inefficient, which is why insects don’t get larger than they are (during the carboniferous, the atmsophere was more oxygen-rich, which helped enable the evolution of all those giant extinct arthropods). In other words, bee-boy would have suffocated long before a cure could have been found, anyway!
I guess there just wasn't enough fan buzz over Bee-Boy.
"Bees. My god". - Batman.
Knowing the Crisis of Infinite Earths incident and the other multiversal events after that it’s safe to say Beeboy is dead but then again I heard all the Universes including the ones that were destroyed during Crises of Infinite Earths were bought back there’s a chance he’s been revived
Yeah, the Convergence event culminated with the Post-Crisis Superman and Hal Jordan going back in time with the Pre-Crisis Supergirl and Flash and stopping the Anti-Monitor before he could destroy the original infinite multiverse, setting the events in motion that led to DC Rebirth. The breaking of the Source Wall later messed with things further but there's no reason to believe this universe is still completely gone. Every past continuity has its own universe, now, and the main universe is a new amalgamation of them all.
The DC multiverse has gone back and forth multiple times over the years. Sometimes there's a single official universe with its own continuity (but occasional retcons, continuity errors, and stories set outside of continuity); other times, there's an entire timey-wimey multiverse where everything that's ever been printed actually happened, even the stuff that affected the entire multiverse in ways that contradict each other; and other times, it's somewhere in between.
Currently, things are at the "everything counts" extreme, with main universe characters remembering everything that ever happened to any version of them across the various retcons. So Bee Boy should be out there (unless he's died since).
In DC 52 there was a limbo universe existing past the edge of the 52 universes that housed the forgotten characters of DC's past. Seen in Animal Man at first and later in Final Crisis. Lots of one shot characters were there -- Merryman of the Inferior Five. I'd suspect he lives, such as it is, in that realm.
Just when I think the world has exhausted the premises upon which to write angsty teenage love stories, we get Bee-Boy and Lana Lang. Wow. Had a great time with this one, thanks!
Now I'm imagining a world where the cosmic rays turned Ben Grimm into a Bee-Thing.
I can see a grant Morrison story about bee boys father being the big bad hunting down the Lanes after finding his son who has been missing for years deceased because of the experiment a few weeks after the events of the comic
Then he takes iowasca for seemingly no reason
Full Disclosure: I was not expecting Lana Lang to go, "Yum, yum, tasty wood"
I guess Superman eventually changed his code to killing insects being okay pretty fast after this, because massive amounts of them die in these city wrecking superhero battles. Even when Supes goes through a wall of a random building, that's going to be killing a lot of spiders and such. 🙄
I wonder if the drunk actor was a reference to Humphrey Bogart filming "The African Queen." Apparently while filming in the Congo and Uganda, everyone got dysentery from drinking the water except Bogart and director John Huston, because they were only drinking booze.
I swear once James Gunn finds out about insect queen Lana and Bee Boy they’ll get 10 movies
I wondered if you would ever cover this character! He's story seemed right up your alley with your fascination for the older, weirder superhero comics.
Your pure glee for the absurd is one of the main things that makes me a fan of you and this channel!
Nearly every episode ends with me saying "well, I never knew I needed that in my life.". The others end with me knowing I needed it, and that I was weird for that.
Bee Boy is some great body horror. And yet, it's so typical of DC world. He's far from alone as a human-something hybrid. I'm going to imagine his dad finds him and threatens that insect scientist to make a cure. Meanwhile, Bee Boy makes friends with the nearby tribes, trading honey for acceptance.
The years go by and he doesn't hear from Superboy, but when Superman debuts in Metropolis he organises to travel there to ask if he is Superboy and if he has made progress on his cure (since insect scientist guy... becomes Bee Man? absconds in the dead of night? Realises his original formula that worked wasn't what was actually in his notes, and is now trying to figure out what he actually did that worked before he can even figure out an antidote?).
Bee Boy buzzes around until he catches Superman's attention. Superman is contrite - he did start working on a cure, but has so many projects on the go he dropped the ball. They go to the Fortress of Solitude and get some proper analyses running. While they wait, Superman introduces Bee Boy around this city has his friend. He ends up working with a beekeeping company he meets at a farmers market, assisting with pollination and honey production, until the results come back. Superman cures him and heals his lungs. He applies a green card to keep working with his new friends, but is rejected and returns to Africa to rebuild his life.
"Bee Boy, My God!"
bee boy story just feels sad and depressing and I am surprised superboy never found a antidote.
WOW!!! That Story is Something, Although I think it was a Silly Idea to begin with the Creator in Me, would have Bee Boy force the Mad Scientist into making Him a Mate,& there would be a Secret City(Hive) of Bee Human Hybrids similar to Gorilla City…Get a Hug from Your Daughters & Keep Up The Outstanding Work Sasha 🖖🏾
7:12 In that case this issue's tagline should've been "Bee afraid, bee very afraid"
If only the Spongebob episode where he leaves society to become a jellyfish had been available to Bee Boy. I also loved the improvised choking and sobbing sounds.
He should have started breakdancing. Bee Boy the bboy could have been a big hit
Were you ever a detective? You do deep dives better than anyone on UA-cam. Excellent video as always.😁
'I plan visiting Dr. Pelham, the famous entomologist..." Ah yes, the world of celebrity entomologists.
I think Grant Morrison is the writer who would be crazy enough to bring Beeboy into the modern era. It would be tragic and horrifying.
I know the idea isn't very original but, wouldn't be kind of cool to have a storyline YEARS LATER about Bee-boy having gone total feral bee because of his solitude and lack of human contact? As said in the video, the "silly Bee-Boy" plot looks like a vilain's origin story, to be honest. And so, it would be about some sort of Monster causing people to disappear in the heart of Africa and stuff. Like, Big time super-heroes wouldn't take it too seriously at first and so, either it would take more and more proportions for them to finally investigate, OR it would be a cool plot for a "lesser" team of heroes or even heroes in training to go see what's going on!
I think it could be nice, at least. Maybe even try to find a good ending for our boy, Kim. Maybe Superman could FINALLY bring him that antidote or something.
Anyway, thank you for the video, as always! I love discovering gems like these from the Silver Age!
According to Google: "Male Bee (Drone). About 55 days is the usual life span of a honeybee drone or male bee. Drones die shortly after mating with the queen." So this doesn't seem like a long-term solution for Kim, or a long-term problem
Seeing these strange stories makes me want to see a modern take on it.
"Naturally, you want a HUMAN boyfriend like Superboy - a 100% space alien with no human blood at all."
Silver Age Lana Lang has the emotional intelligence of a _brick!_ That had me choking with laughter.
I love it when you do Silver Age themes. You know one I'd like to see you do? The story of Ferro Lad! Of all the stories I read from that time, none has haunted me as much-fifty years later I can still feel it.
B-plot Supes has the scientists of Kandor working on the antidote...but they're too busy watching Kal's love life to finish it.
I hope the bee puns weren't intentional
Never saw this tragic Bee-Boy story before, but he just simply joins the list of one-issue characters whose storylines were never resolved (one of our favorites in that department is the anti-heroine Vendetta, from Batman Beyond #7). However, we've always thought that Lana was alluring as Insect Queen, so we created our own spin on her for Heroineburgh: Devorra the Queen Bee, an insect-powered villainess who debuts in our live-action Episode 3 and Heroineburgh Comics issue #3. She has obsessive issues with control, and wants to turn everyone into her drone slaves!
Hopefully this video started a movement #justice4beeboy
The bee puns intentional or not were killing me. It was un🐝lievable
Otto Binder is bringing all the Captain Marvel rejected ideas lol
Ah, bee puns. Both the easiest and most delightful of puns.
Love these dives into the oddest and obscurest corners of superhero lore.
Somewhere in the DCU, Bee-Old Man is sitting somewhere, stroking their long white beard, still waiting for the day Superboy will come with that antidote.
He should have gone all-in on the new persona. Grab himself a boombox and learn how to breakdance.
This looks like a job for beeboy!
Lol if only
Binder clearly tapping into " The Fly".
I rewound to re-listen to you say "yum yum tasty wood" about 9 times.
Soooo funny I almost peed hahaha
*_"TASTY WOOD"_*
If only the writer had known the future...🤭
This whole tale makes Otto Binder look very suss...like, has Human Centipede in his basement suss...
The “he had a punctured lung” sent me. You made him a new for a punctured lung?
male bees drones don't have stingers.i remember reading this story about bee boy.
I am shocked Grant Morrison never brought Beeboy back.
Otto Binder's inspiration must have been between Franz Kafka and 50s shlock B-movie sci-fi.
Other than the punny joke to say, I'm getting all the honeyz!" I can't come up with a reasonable positive to being a permanent Bee-Boy. I see him being a head banger though and blasting Korn for never getting that antidote.
6:45 this is the best sound effect of kiss I ever heard, the emotion...
3:50 In the DC universe you'd be hard pressed to find a scientist who isn't mad.
Even JorEl is a mad scientist, as is Batman. Actually so is Dejah Thoris who influences the DC Amazons a lot.
According to all known laws of aviation, there is no way a bee should be able to fly.
Its wings are too small to get its fat little body off the ground.
The bee, of course, flies anyway because bees don’t care what humans think is impossible.
Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black. Yellow, black.
Plot twist: Lana generates a spider womb, secretly laying an egg case full of hubdreds of baby Superboys.
"You've saved New Propolis City once again. Thank you Dr. Bees, and Bee Boy, and Dr. Boy, and Boy Boy."
In the recent Jim Gordon backup in Detective comics, we found Bullock has his WIGATI file. Or When I get around to it. I wonder if Superman has one of those as well?
Why is no one asking where those giant flowers came from that were just bug enough to kick off the petals. Or is it that for just a moment they shrank to actual bee-size only to re-enlarge later?
Superboy could have just built him a robot body and transferred his head. I think Superboy had already built robot clones of himself by this time and everyone was writing about bodyless heads and head transplants and Supes could have put the boy's old body in cryogenic storage in the Fortress of Solitude.
Of course this is the same Superboy that would later go insane and destroy the multiverse.
Not entirely so. You’re thinking of the Superboy of Earth Prime. This was the Superboy that would later be retconned post Crisis as being from a “pocket universe” created as a plot against the Legion by their enemy the Time Trapper. He died fighting alongside the Legion against the Trapper in the 30th century. Prime is the one who went into a limbo with Superman & Lois of earth 2, and Alex Luthor of earth 3, trying to kill everyone when he got out in Infinite Crisis,etc. While their powers and looks are identical, the similarities end there. They are easy to confuse for those who haven’t read the pocket universe material, which is largely overlooked even now.
The worst part is that he would’ve died anyway because of how insects breathe. They just absorb oxygen through these little holes in their bodies but it only works at a tiny scale, that’s why we don’t have giant insects…
So Bee Boy is dead. Sorry.
That dude knew that too… he just wanted to make a big ass bee.
if they have lungs they might grow big or it they was infected by magic you know in Fantasy bugs are giant or humanoid.
Wow, now i kinda want to write a Superboy/Bee-Boy Enemies to Friends to Lovers Angsty fanfic with a fix it happy ending
The hair and the striped shirt are very fitting for this episode lol, nice touch 👍
I'm pretty sure male bees don't make honey, so Bee Boy could've been in for another shock if Lana had stuck around.
Oh she totally could’ve made him her drone! But that would’ve been a whole different comic book conversation.
Ok, follow me on this.
Driders in D&D are Drow (dark elves) that were forcefully transformed into intelligent, centaur-like, elf-spider hybrids.
Bee Boy is a centaur-like hybrid of a human and bee.
Drow+spider= Driders
Human+bee= Hee
Or
Bee+human= Beeman
Just a thought.
Insect Queen turned into a spider? But Spiders aren't insects, she should hold no dominion over them. This ruthless Tyrant MUST BE STOPPED!
Lana doesn't even THINK about lending him the ring to see if he can shift back with healed up lungs as she does.
Truly a Bee-Movie Plot!
Lol, Sasha went hard on that cheek kiss sound efffeft and I’m here for it.
The original precursor to the Jeff Goldblum movie, The Bee, I mean, the The Fly.
A doctor fixated on bees?
I'm getting flashbacks to an episode of Scrubs.
Cicada Girl looks terrifyingly like the Xantis from the Outer Limits.
Can't say enough about how much I loved this era of Superboy as a kid (still do). And Insect Queen (costume and powers) was especially a favorite. I remember drawing a male version of the character for at least a dozen comics. Can't believe I never read this one. Really wish they'd given him costume like hers, or at least brought him back older in costume in a Superman comic. Cool video.
The only time I'm not surprised by a silver age story is when I already know it.
"You will Bee-lieve a boy can fly"
Of course, no one knows how since his aerodynamics all all wrong.😉
Good thing he wasn't clumsy-- the Bumbling Bee-Boy might be too alliterative.
Nobody should be too surprised that this came from Binder. Mr Mind was a caterpillar, Tawky Tawny was a humanoid Tiger.
504 "he feels like he should not BEE" I can't believe you come up with that without making a joke
So cold, just...kinda dropped guy off and left him...
My first exposure to Insect Queen was Legion of Super-Heroes (282) and having missed the golden age adventure comics Lsh I was surprised and delightfully confused.
"One morning, as Kim awoke from uneasy dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into an enormous bee."
"... the emotional intelligence of a brick ..."🤣
I know some people like this! 😂
1:55 When you're super man, you can kill most things on the planet by plucking one of your hairs, blowing into it, and having it ricochet inside someone's skull. I can see why he'd have little interest in killing anything.
The mad scientist probably became Doctor bees
All I can say is...
"Come along with me, and the butterflies and bees"
With Lana singing “I Love You Strong Bee!”