Wherein Starman Learns A Hard Lesson About Cosmic Rod Construction
or: Ted Knight gets taken out rather anticlimactically.
context is simple: every golden age hero ever is fighting an atomic ubermensch with the brain of the world's greatest villain, under James Robinson's pen.. or keyboard, whatever he assembles symbols into sentences with.
said ubermensch, known as Dynaman before the revelation of who he really was (for which he has a certain ex-Delores Winters to thank) has been pretty much cleaning house; guys like the Red Bee and Black Condor prove no challenge to him, while somewhat more powerful heroes such as Green Lantern and Hawkman have proven two-page fight scenes to him at best.
speedster Johnny Quick, realizing that things are going to hell in a handbasket very quickly after the former Dynaman fells Green Lantern in the span of one of those two-three page slugfest, calls upon the last hero who might actually have a chance of stopping this madman.
... and engineer of larger, more powerful, and glaringly fragile cosmic rods. go with the smaller, compact design, Ted. Please.
(also, it should be plenty obvious from the hair whose brain's in that body. look up the golden age, at any rate- the revelation is sporfle-worthy.)
it's a happy ending, at any rate. after that, captain comet makes his debut distracting dynaman long enough for liberty belle to shove a fragment of ted's failure at engineering right through dynanazi's chest, and down he goes.