When the cosmic situation looked particularly dire, DC Comics’ “spaceman/Batman,” Space Ranger, had two deus ex machina he could always rely on.
They were roughly analogous to a utility belt and a Boy Wonder.
One was his ray gun, a device that the term “versatile” doesn’t do justice to, firing a Thermoblaze ray, a Vacuumizer, Numb Rings, a Sonifier, Asborb-Discs, etc. It proved as handy as Space Ghost’s later power bands.
“That ray gun reminds me a heck of a lot of Superman’s eyeballs,” remarked Michael Fraley. “Pretty useful!”
“I loved Space Ranger!” recalled Ellis Rose. “But I was also a kid who loved the early Silver Age version of Batman. When I read your comment that Space Ranger was the Batman of space, I realized that I was attracted by the colorfulness of both. Yeah, in hindsight, that ray gun was too much. But that also is the adult me talking.”
And even when the universally useful ray gun failed him, Space Ranger could always count on being bailed out by his little pink sidekick, the rotund, trunk-snouted alien Cryll.
“Cryll, who could transform himself into any animal (like the Doom Patrol’s Beast Boy, but with the added advantage of being able to use alien fauna with exotic abilities), was a valuable ally,” noted comics historian Don Markstein.
In Cryll’s Deadly Double! (Tales of the Unexpected 75, Feb.-March 1963),Artist Bob Brown and writer Arnold Drake finally gave readers an origin for Cryll while introducing us to his evil opposite number, Drexyll.
We learned that a teleportation experiment gone wrong had propelled Cryll into space, and that the criminal Drexyll had later managed to duplicate it to escape capture.
After defeating Drexyll in a Sword in the Stone-type battle of transformations and dispatching him home, Cryll says, “Fortunately, the teleportation process can only be used for brief periods each year! I couldn’t stand another battle like that! I’m pooped!”
“Easygoing, good for a laugh, and looking for all the world like one of those squeezable stress dolls, Cryll was Space Ranger’s loyal companion from their first published adventure,” noted Jon Morris in his book The League of Regrettable Sidekicks.
“‘It was certainly my lucky day when you found me, stranded far out in the deeps of space beyond Pluto,’ Cryll recalls in a flashback, and the reader is treated to the sight of Space Ranger carrying in both hands what appears to be a ham frozen in a block of ice.”
“The absurd-looking Cryll rescues Space Ranger from dangers for which his Multi-Ray Pistol is no match,” Morris wrote. “Able to fight crooks as an alien monster or slip aboard their ships disguised as valuable loot, Cryll seems to work harder than his boss.”
Cryll took on the superpowers of whatever alien being he imitated — whether the Mercurian Telepathic Monkey or the Neptunian Flying Dragon. That made him quite a formidable “sidekick” indeed, far outclassing the various BBoy Wonders
Cryll tended to get rendered unconscious before he was able to overwhelm the foe of the month with his array of super-forms.
Or maybe, like any sidekick who really cares, he was just stepping aside so his hero could collect the glory.
Cheryl Spoehr recalled “…a paperback series titled ‘Agent of TERRA’ which not only tried to tie science fiction into the Bond/UNCLE fad, but he had an alien sidekick with the same power.”
“The whimsical sidekick seemed to be a lingering holdover from the Golden Age,” observed Mark Engblom. “ Towards the end of that fabled period, it seemed everyone and his uncle and his uncle’s next door neighbor had a zany sidekick….even the Spectre! With the Silver Age up and running, it seems some of the editors who came up during the Golden Age thought the silly sidekicks were still a good idea.”
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