“Bears Driving Monster Trucks! Just Like the Old Fortune Teller Said!”

31 Random Issues Featuring Wild, Weird, and Wonderful Moments Involving Bears

1. Shirtless Bear-Fighter #4 (2017)
“BEARS DRIVING MONSTER TRUCKS!” “JUST LIKE THE OLD FORTUNE TELLER SAID!” Man, that is one fortune teller who really knows her stuff.

I’m not one for spouting baseless hyperbole, but this might be the single best comic page ever produced.

From Image’s marketing department: “After being betrayed by the bears that raised him, the legendary Shirtless Bear-Fighter wanders the forest he’s sworn to protect, fistfighting bears, eating flapjacks, and being the angriest man the world has ever known! When wild-eyed, super-strong bears attack the citizens of Major City, Shirtless ventures into the human world to do what he does best… PUNCH THOSE BEARS IN THE FACE!”

In other words: the hero we both need and deserve.

2. Wow Comics #18 (1941)
You know, even after the toughest days at the office, I can honestly I have never said, “Well, at least I wasn’t hunted by a rifle-toting bear on a bicycle today.”

“SCARLET, THAT BEAR CAN’T SHOOT AT US!” I bet that’s a line Pinky never imagined himself saying when he started his sidekick career.

From elsewhere on the interwebs: “While visiting a big game hunter in his home and listening to stories of the thrill of the hunt, Brian [Mr. Scarlet] and Pinky witness a bear trophy suddenly springing to life, which then puts on hunting attire, grabs a rifle, and heads out the door! When Mr. Scarlet and Pinky try to follow it, the bear turns on them… and they become the hunted!” Ain’t that always the way.

3. The Punisher #4 (2000)
“Cuddly. Lovable. Docile. That won’t do at all.” Bless my soul, there was something magical when Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon came together.

In this story, mob boss Ma Gnucci and her men corner the Punisher at the Central Park Zoo. Being the resourceful fellow that he is, Frank finds all sorts of innovative ways to turn the environment to his advantage — sometimes as easily as punching a bear in the schnoz.

I took a break from reading new comics in the 1990s, so I missed out on Dillon’s work on titles like Hellblazer and Preacher when it first came out. Because of that, my introduction to him happened with “Welcome Back, Frank,” the first story arc in the 2000 Punisher series written by Ennis, Dillon’s frequent collaborator.

I had heard some online chatter about how the Punisher was back and I thought I should check it out, but I wasn’t expecting too much. I mean… it’s the Punisher. He shoots bad guys, they try to kill him back, “fight fight fight/fight fight fight/The Itchy and Scratchy Show,” etc. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But here’s the thing: this Punisher series was funny. Hysterically funny, even. Here was a Frank Castle I had never seen before: a grim guy who’s still on his mission of vengeance, but having a wickedly dark sense of humor about it — and surrounded by a cast of kooky characters (Soap!) who act as great foils providing their offbeat reactions to his idea of justice.

Dillon was also a master of the reaction shot, and he instinctively got what a lot of other contemporary artists don’t; namely, it’s all in the face. Just look at that polar bear’s very confused mug, and compare it to the very angry look he and his buddies sport on the following page. Perfection.

4. Mighty Bear #1 (1957)
So many questions, so little time.

Why would bees need a factory to make honey?

Why would they even consider hiring a bear to be their foreman?

Why does Mighty Bear’s eyes look like that just from over-indulging in some honey?

Why is he staggering out of the building like he’s drunk? (And follow-up question: Have I been using the wrong honey all this time…?)

And for the love of all that’s holy, WHY IS THE LIQUID DRIPPING FROM HIS MOUTH AND HANDS COLORED BLOOD RED???

Everyone has to stop what they’re doing until we figure this out.

5. Nightwing #87 (2022)
I think one thing we can all agree on in these not-always-agreeable times is the fact that, just as criminals are a superstitious and cowardly lot, our favorite comic creators are themselves a silly and whimsical bunch… and I mean that in the most complimentary way.

Maybe it’s because they never grew up in the same way as the rest of us poor pants-wearing souls… maybe it’s because they’re giddy about the fact they get to make a living with their ideas and doodles… or maybe there was always something a little off-kilter about them in the first place that drove them into the cartooning profession. I don’t know, I’m not a fancy psychologist (or even a not-fancy one), but this silliness of which I speak can manifest itself in many different and wonderful ways. One of the more fun manifestations of this is the humble shout-out, the little winks that comic creators give to one another — or to their fans — within their works.

Case in point: in a 2022 issue of Nightwing, artist Bruno Redondo elected to illustrate the story in a series of gorgeous double-page spreads that see Nightwing cavorting through the cityscape while on a mission. (What’s especially neat about the art is how Redondo uses multiple time-lapse images of Nightwing within each double-page spread — similar to how Johnny Quick’s speed was illustrated in his Golden Age stories — to show his movement through the city.)

This format allows for a lot of fun details to be inserted into each tableau, including a very small blink-and-you’ll-miss-it poster on a wall featuring the head of a bear and the text “I’M DEFINITELY NOT A BEAR — The G. Simone Blood-Feud Show.”

To the uninitiated, this is a tiny bit of nonsense that means nothing, but to those in the know it’s another salvo in the ongoing (fun) feud between Nightwing writer Tom Taylor and writer Gail Simone.

From a 2022 Screen Rant article: “The Easter egg in question made reference to accusations (which Taylor has helped to circulate on social media) that Simone is a bear that has somehow disguised itself as a human comic book writer and maintained this masquerade for nearly two decades.”

“The Nightwing gag is the latest salvo in a joking flame war between Simone and Taylor, who recently signed an exclusive contract with DC Comics. Both writers are well-known for their use of humor in their stories and have developed a friendly rivalry and huge followings on social media, where they are both usually agreeable to chatting with fans and offering a metaphorical peek behind the curtain as to how the comic writing business works while teasing upcoming releases.”

Ms. Simone was not available for comment, presumably because she was out stealing a pic-a-nic basket at the time of the call.

6. Doctor Doom #7 (2020)
Doctor Doom riding a bear. That’s it, that’s the pitch.

“I have returned.” Ain’t no doubt about that.

Best line found online while researching this bear: “He possessed the standard abilities of a bear.” I’m a little disappointed that Doom would settle for a bear with standard bear abilities — it’s the Marvel universe, surely there are flying bears or bears that shoot lasers out of their eyes — but I suppose when it comes to bears, “standard abilities” is more than enough.

7. Herbie #23 (1967)
“Can You Bear It?” begins with Herbie accepting a package of lollipops with labels like “Lollipops to Make Ear Lobes Longer” and “Lollipops for Teaching Hummingbirds to Hum Dixie.”

Declaring he doesn’t need these “jerky lollipops,” he throws them out the window with the whole lot (box and all) landing on his father’s head. Dad eats one labelled “Centipede Lollipop” to find out what’s so great about these lollipops his “little fat nothing” son is always sucking on, and… immediately turns into a giant dancing centipede.

Page TWO, people. We’re only on Page TWO.

That massive head trip is all it takes for dear old dad to try and take away all of Herbie’s lollipops, leading to our hero carrying his cabinet full of them into the city zoo to hide them. Thankfully, his bear buddy is there to help him out by bending the bars of his cage (um, okay) to allow Herbie inside.

Basically, what we’re dealing with here is a classic “boy meets bear/boy learns bear is sad about bad PR for his species/boy bends laws of time and space to make bears the most popular animal by changing the outcome of historical events and classic fairy tales so that bears are revered by humanity only to find out his old zoo buddy now has let fame go to his head and is considering running for president” plot. You know, that old chestnut.

This story appeared in the final issue of ACG’s Herbie, and while I don’t want to give anyone the impression that this was the final issue in the series because this story is obviously when the LSD finally kicked in for “Shane O’Shea” (writer Richard Hughes)… I wouldn’t discount that theory, either.

Face it, friends — it’s Herbie’s world, we’re just living in it. (Bop.)

8. My Boyfriend Is a Bear (2018)
Superhero books? Check. War? Check. Horror? Check. Fantasy? Sci-Fi? Kiddie humor? Check, check, check. Bears as far as the eye can see.

“Aha!” you say to yourself. “There’s no way you’re going to find a bear in a romance comic!”

To which I say: you sure you want to make a bet about that?

From Oni Press: “Nora has bad luck with men. When she meets an (actual) bear on a hike in the Los Angeles hills, he turns out to be the best romantic partner she’s ever had! He’s considerate, he’s sweet, he takes care of her. But he’s a bear, and winning over her friends and family is difficult. Not to mention he has to hibernate all winter. Can true love conquer all?”

I’ve seen some of those dating apps. She could do a lot worse.

9. The Adventures of Bob Hope #41 (1956)
“Look! It’s Hope — riding a bear!” I’m more impressed by the look of concentration on that bear’s face. I’m not sure I’d be that focused on the race with an aging armed comedian riding on my back.

Celebrities hawking comics is something that’s almost as old as the comics themselves; there was a time when every self-respecting Western movie star had a comic to call his own. But the publishers didn’t limit themselves to big-name cowboys; when superheroes fell out of fashion in the latter part of the 1940s, all manners of celebrities were tapped to fill the books.

For its part, DC went straight to the top of the Hollywood food chain and signed up comedian/USO fixture Bob Hope to star in The Adventures of Bob Hope, a title that ran for 109 issues from 1950 to 1968.
Modern-day readers might have a hard time believing a comic starring Bob Hope could have ran for 18 years; not only was Hope well into middle age (and never the kind of star that had a lot of “kid appeal,” even during his younger days) at the time the book came out, pretty much all his stories could be boiled down to one plot: wise-cracking Bob gets into zany predicaments while lusting after buxom women who would have been half his age in real life.

My guess: the title was kept afloat by well-meaning parents and grandparents who wanted to give their kids something wholesome to read and recognized the name on the cover, just as DC had wagered by approaching Hope. Nothing more kid-friendly than a sexagenarian who wagged his tongue at anything with hips.

10. Uncle Sam #2 (1997)
No one knows for sure how Russia came to have a bear as a national symbol. Russians and bears have been linked since at least Shakespeare’s time, when the playwright referred to a “rugged Russian bear” in Macbeth. Maps dating back to the 17th century show Russia as a land inhabited by bears (much like they showed lions in Africa), likely as a way of emphasizing the forested wilderness that stretched across much of the land claimed by Russia at the time.

By the late 19th and 20th centuries, political cartoonists taking jabs at the nation had settled on depicting it in cartoons as a bear, just as Great Britain was personified by a lion or an English bulldog. This wasn’t always welcomed by the Russian state or its people; where British lions are regal and American bald eagles soar majestically, bears are just as known for their lumbering gait as they are for their large and powerful presence, and not everyone in that country was keen on being seen as big, savage, and clumsy.
Over time, though, Russians grew to accept the bear as a symbol, with various parts of Russia adding bears to their coat of arms and the nation creating the cute and cuddly Misha as mascot for the 1980 Moscow Olympic Games.

In 1997, Steve Darnell and Alex Ross put the public’s perception of Russia as a bear to good use in Uncle Sam. In this two-part Vertigo mini-series, the classic Quality Comics character (who was based on the World War I recruiting poster by James Montgomery Flagg) is cast as either the embodiment of the American spirit or a confused homeless man in a battered Uncle Sam outfit — the story switches back and forth between these two realities as Sam revisits some of the nation’s historical events and tries to figure out where things went wrong.

At one point in the story, Sam encounters other national personifications: Britannia (UK), Marianne (France), Columbia (U.S.)… and an unnamed bear sporting a Russian soldier’s hat and looking like… well, not like an evil empire as far as Sam can tell.

The bear offers to give Sam some advice, to warn him that he cannot win his battle against “the foe” the old way, that their shared enemy knows all their strategies. Whether Sam refuses to listen out of arrogance or because the advice is coming from a Russian-accented bear is hard to say, but the bear is right about one thing: he’s not the only symbol that started out standing for one thing and turned into something else.

11. Adventure Comics #261 (1959)
Time to ask another burning questions of the day. Specifically: “Clark, it’s summer camp. You plan on wearing those sweatshirts and long pants all summer long?”

“Superboy Meets Lois Lane!” sees our Teen of Steel meet his future co-worker and girl friend when she shows up at a summer camp near Smallville for the express purpose of meeting Superboy.

Naturally, she and Lana Lang instantly bond over their shared obsession, and naturally she’s not there five minutes without some crisis that Superboy needs to save her from, this time in the form of a hungry bear attracted by the smell of cooked hot dogs.

Sure, Superboy. Your “super-aim” will make sure the bear lands unhurt. You betcha.

12. Georgie #11 (1947)
In the cutthroat teen humor comic market, there are just two rules: (1) You either win or you die. (2) Only Archie is allowed to win.

I exaggerate, but not by much. You could fill a small cruise ship with all the comic-book teens who took aim at the Archie gang and went down fighting. Buzzy, Cookie, Binky, Suzie, Ginger, Andy, Candy, Dudley, Howie, Gabby, Freddy, Scooter… the graveyard behind Riverdale High is filled with the shallow graves of teen humor wannabes who tried and failed to take readers away from Archie and the gang.

In 1945, it was Georgie’s turn to take a swing at the king. The splash page for his first issue sets the stage: “Yes, folks — meet GEORGIE LAWSON of Riverside, USA — a whistle stop between Maine and California…. and meet his folks, his friends… he’s lovable, laughable, mischievous, the kind of kid who simply can’t keep out of trouble…. he’s the all-American lad, the typical teen-ager…. follow his uproarious misadventures in the funniest strip you’ve ever thrilled to….”

Given how this was a Marvel comic from the 1940s and early 1950s, the blatant copycatting probably shouldn’t surprise anyone: “Riverside, USA”… a proto-beatnik best pal… an attractive brunette girlfriend… a school principal constantly harassing our hapless hero… plots in which slapstick and wacky misadventures end with Georgie saving the day and smelling like a rose… for crying out loud, near the end of the book’s run even the cover logo morphs into the familiar “balloon letter” font familiar to fans of Archie comics.

But all the copying apparently worked; the book ran for 39 issues over seven years, not a bad run considering the short lifespans of most other Archie competitors. While fellow Marvel teen star Patsy Walker later found a second career as a Marvel superhero, as far as I know Georgie hasn’t made any appearances since the end of his book in 1952.

“The Bear Facts of Life!” opens with Georgie getting initiated into the “Secret Order of the Brother Fraternity,” and for his final test he has to play a prank on someone without knowing who it is. This “someone” turns out to be Mister Ricklesnood, his principal, and as punishment for his prank he’s banned from the school boat ride happening that weekend.

But the rules don’t apply to Georgie, and so he sneaks on board and tries to pretend everything is fine with his girlfriend while looking over his shoulder to avoid Mr. Ricklesnood. Everything works according to plan until they go ashore and set out a picnic, which results in (1) Ricklesnood seeing him (2) a jar of honey getting dumped on Ricklesnood’s head (3) Ricklesnood chasing Georgie and assuming he ducked inside a nearby cave and (4) a bear showing up to enjoy an unexpected treat.

Will Georgie somehow bungle his way into saving his principal’s life and getting cheered as a hero for totally unearned reasons? I’ll give you three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

13. The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones #22 (1984)
“Use the cork, dummy!” Sure, pop a cork at the bear, that will stop him from ripping your limbs off. And suddenly that whole refrigerator thing makes a lot more sense.

(I don’t know why inside my head the bear is yelling, “Dude! What the hell, man?” after Indy bops him with a cork. That’s just the kind of place the inside of my head is.)

Nothing to see here, just your average “madman with a castle entertaining himself by watching wild animals rip apart his captors” business. All in a day’s work for your average archaeologist. Just ask any archaeologist you know, they devote half a semester in college to exactly this kind of work-related scenario.

14. Shock SuspensStories #1 (1952)
As if normal, non-supernatural bears aren’t scary enough, here’s “The Rug!”, an EC story that opens with “wealthy socialite sportsman” Conrad Cartwright inviting Reggie up to his “northwood retreat.”

“Very attractive, Connie,” Reggie says as they open the door. “But we’re miles from civilization up here. What in heavens are we going to do for amusement?”

“There’s plenty to do around here,” Connie says. “Fishing… hunting…”

“Hunting? UGH!” our ascot-wearing Reggie retorts. “How disgusting!” He then points to Connie’s bearskin rug as the reason he “abhors” hunting: “Look at that poor creature’s eyes!”

They go out hunting the next morning with Connie promising to bag a bear so that Reggie can have a rug of his own. When they kill one, Reggie ends up vomiting as Connie “calmly proceeded to skin the bear.”

Later that night by the fireplace, Reggie says he doesn’t want a rug anymore: “It’s horrible! Inhuman!” Connie doesn’t take kindly to this and says fine, he’ll keep the rug for himself. He then falls asleep by the fire…

“Suddenly the silence outside the cabin was shattered with an ear-splitting roar!” Connie grabs his rifle and goes out to see if it’s another grizzly, and he finds one all right… “its tiny red eyes glowing… its hideous dripping open…”

…and, well, you can see above how the rest of Connie’s final moments went down.

15. Avengers vs X-Men #4 (2012)
Continuing our search for polar bears, our efforts to find more examples of these majestic creatures take us to their natural habitat in Antarctica where we find…

…What’s that?

Yes, I thought I saw someone in the back raise their hand. You had a question? Go ahead.

“But, sir,” you say, metaphorically pushing up your glasses as you do so, “polar bears aren’t found in Antarctica, they live in the Arctic.”

Maybe on the boring old Earth where you live. But here on the Marvel-616 Earth, I assure you polar bears are quite plentiful not just at the North Pole, but also at the South Pole, the equator, the Alps, the Rockies, Latveria, Wakanda, and parts of downtown Newark. Just ask Logan, he’ll tell you.

If you’re looking at this page and thinking in your best Simpsons voice “Boy, I hope somebody got fired for that blunder,” you’ve got a few suspects to choose from. I hold the artists (John Romita Jr. on pencils, Scott Hanna on inks) innocent of all charges, but on the writers’ side we have no less than five of the usual suspects to choose from (Jason Aaron, Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, Matt Fraction, and Jonathan Hickman).

Maybe we should give whichever writer came up with this scene some slack. After all, having Logan kill an emperor penguin and wear its carcass to keep warm would look awfully silly. Wait, did I say silly? I meant hilarious.

16. Star Trek #57 (1978)
“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new bears and new civilizations, to boldly go…”

You don’t dive into a franchise like Star Trek expecting to see a lot of bears. A few mugatos, some tribbles, maybe a horta or two, but not bears. But anything can (and often did) happen in the Gold Key comics based on the original series.

“Spore of the Devil” finds Kirk and crew visiting a world with a culture much like medieval England. While on a “protocol visit” to this planet that is still ruled by feudalism and hasn’t even discovered electricity yet (“Prime Directive? More like a Prime Suggestion, am I right?”), Kirk, Spock and Scotty find out the powerful wizard propping up the local ruler is in fact a shape-changing alien whose starship crashed on the planet many years earlier and he has no memory of why he was sent there.

Intuiting that his mission was to advance the culture toward peace, he allied with one of the planet’s rulers to forge a unified empire, using his advanced technology to imply magical abilities. But he suffered from unexplained seizures, and he agrees to help save a man’s life if Spock can cure him. So Spock and the alien set out to find the site of his crash site after deducting that the only source of the energy on the planet that could affect him in that way must be coming from the remnants of his ship.

This is where the bear comes in. Wait, can you call it a bear if it’s on another planet? Whatever, that Memory Alpha website says it’s a bear, so we’re going with a bear.

17. Archie Giant Series #3 (1956)
“Dashing through the snow, in Archie’s jalopy sleigh, o’er the fields we’ll run, screaming all the way…”

When Archie converts his jalopy into a motorized sleigh, the gang climbs in under a bearskin blanket and goes for a sleigh ride. After a police officer tells them to get their “crazy contraption” off the road, they decide to go off-roading over some bumpy terrain which causes Betty and Jughead to fly out of the back seat.

Stranded in the woods with Archie and Veronica not even noticing they’re gone, they find a cave for Betty to hole up in with the blanket while Jughead tries to flag Archie down. But when he doesn’t have any luck, he decides to crawl into the dark cave with Betty, only she’s now outside the cave and he’s trying to grab a piece of actual bearskin. Let’s just hope the bear didn’t see the other one. “Oh, my God! MARV????”

18. Journey Into Mystery #59 (1960)
“The time: 1960! The place: somewhere off the Atlantic coast!” At the start of this story, we meet a Russian military commander who’s asking Igor if he’s ready for the moment at hand. A talking bear says he’ll be right out. Just another day in Khrushchev’s Soviet Union.

The next page explains what’s going on: our talking bear is in fact a Russian spy wearing a bear suit who’s about to embark “on the strangest and most important spy mission of all time!”

The plan: the Soviet sub is dropping him off near an atomic testing area where the Americans are about to detonate a bomb. When scientists arrive after the blast to take readings, Igor in his bear suit will pretend to be a talking bear mutated by the blast… and after the scientists reveal their remarkable discovery to the world, he’ll take off his costume and let everyone see how easily the “decadent capitalist fools” in the West were deceived by (checks notes) a guy in a bear suit.

Now, before you do anything silly like introduce logic into this story, no, the scientists don’t discover he’s a guy in a bear suit when they do a medical examination because, as the story shows us, it would be illegal for the doctors to force medical tests on any being that shows intelligence, and the “bear” refuses to consent to any physical tests. So the scientists restrict themselves to “mentality tests” and he wows audiences with his knowledge of multiplication tables.

Back in Mother Russia, Igor’s superiors can’t believe the Americans are falling for this (neither can I, frankly), and pretty soon Igor is making headlines and appearing on television talk shows. Meanwhile, some Americans start to worry what the existence of a thinking bear means for the human race.
“And I tell you if we had an army of thinking bears, we could use them to fight our wars!” one street preachers says confidently in front of a fruit stand (make your own bananas joke here). “Never again would humans have to be slain in battle!”

Counterpoint! “No! An army of bears would be too dangerous!” says another street-walking philosopher. “They might turn and attack us! We would end up serving them!” (It’s right there in the Bill of Rights, people! The right to bear arms, not the right to arm bears!)

Well, soon enough Igor decides the time is ripe to reveal who and what he really is, so he calls a press conference to show the world that he is, in fact, just a guy in a bear suit. But just before he steps out into the spotlight to make his big reveal, he takes off his bear costume’s head… and receives a startling surprise.

“For the first time since the nuclear explosion, I removed my disguise! I started to walk towards the door! There was a mirror… I turned and looked into it… But I knew it wasn’t impossible! With atomic radiation, all things are possible, and I was the living proof! For that fallout hadn’t given a bear the mind of a man, it had given a man… THE BODY OF A BEAR!”

“What happens now?” our spy-turned-bear wails. “WHAT HAPPENS NOW??!”

Speaking of questions, I have so, so many questions of my own, and not just ones about using the bathroom.

19. Captain America #336 (1987)
POONT! You say you’ve never seen Captain America punch a bear? Well, let me rectify that for you.

“Natural Calling!” came along at an interesting time in Steve Rogers’ life. Not for the first time, he stepped away from his role as Captain America, and this time the government found someone more willing to take orders (the man who would later go on to be known as USAgent) from “the Commission” appointed to oversee Captain America’s actions.

As the story begins, we see a news report about the new Captain America targeting an ultra-conservative group of terrorists called the Watchdogs, right before the news anchor turns to the manhunt for Brother Nature, an “ecological saboteur” who has somehow managed to single-handedly bring Washington’s timber industry to a standstill.

Cut to a bar in the Evergreen State, where a bearded Rogers looking for some peace and quiet can’t seem to catch a break. After quelling a mob about to storm a park ranger station because they figure the rangers must be in cahoots with this Brother Nature, Rogers takes a drive to ruminate on recent events when the road splits in two beneath him and his van tumbles into a massive cravasse.

After coming back up to the surface, he meets Brother Nature, who happens to be on the scene and, while he means Rogers no ill will, he tells him to “get on that fossil-burning pollutant machine of yours and split, dig?”

Rogers starts asking questions about how he’s able to cause natural disasters, and before you know it he’s being buffeted by gale-force winds and threatened with a stampede of deer. When those don’t deter him, Brother Nature pulls out the big guns… er, paws.

“For the love of Mother, what kind of man are you?” bellows our bare-chested belligerent, right before he knocks himself out and breaks his own ankle trying to take down Rogers in another earthquake assault.

Then we hear his sad story: he was in fact a former park ranger who tried to fight private developers planning to chop down redwoods — “some of them older than the U.S. of A. itself!” — and got laughed out of court. He turns to eco-sabotage, gets beaten and left for dead for his troubles, and has a vision that “the goddess of the Earth” appointed him as nature’s guardian. The story ends when Rogers brings Brother Nature back up to the surface and he sees for himself what his zealotry has wrought: the destruction of the forest that he wanted so badly to protect.

All in all, it’s a nice little story about the dangers of turning to fanaticism to achieve your goals, and Rogers ends the story by learning from Brother Nature’s example that he can’t go against the Commission that took away his name and uniform: “No matter what the personal cost, I must not declare war on appointed officials of my nation’s government!” That’s Rogers for you, always making it about himself.

20. Buffy the Vampire Slayer #55 (2003)
My finer internet sources tell me a djinn is an invisible creature that first appears in the writings of pre-Islamic Arabia and was later included in Islamic culture and beliefs. Neither innately good or evil (hence not analogous to Christian concepts of angels and demons), these supernatural creatures can procreate with us lowly humans, but they generally prefer to keep to their own kind. If they are injured by someone, they usually seek revenge or possess the assailant’s body, refusing to leave it until forced to do so by exorcism.

Because of ancient beliefs that the djinn (also called genies in Western texts) can change their form, control the elements, and possess humans, over the centuries they had other magical abilities attributed to them, and believers would wear charms to protect themselves from vengeful djinns who are either acting on their own or in the service of their human allies.

Bottom line: they can be unpredictable creatures and powerful enemies you don’t want to mess with, but their more recent depictions in popular culture (think the Genie in Aladdin) have painted them more as formidable magical allies whose actions can cause their human friends to agree they “ain’t never had a friend” like them.

That’s certainly the case with young Dawn, who one day receives a djinn in the form of a teddy bear as a present. The bear was intended for her big sister Buffy (who’s MIA in this story), and the gift-giver expected the djinn-in-the-form-of-a-teddy-bear to hurt the Slayer on behalf of his demonic patron.
But then a funny thing happened: maybe it’s because this young Dawn loves the bear so much she makes him the featured guest at her dolly tea party, but the bear turns out to be a danger to everyone but her.

For instance, when a school bully rips it out of her arms (and subsequently has it confiscated by a teacher who tells Dawn she can have at the end of the day), he later learns why you don’t mess with any friend of “Hoopy Bear.” The same thing happens with a few other town residents (including our hapless gift-giver) who give the bear a reason to fiercely protect his friend.

No one dies (except a few vampire punks who had it coming), but the story ends on a sad note when, after Dawn realizes the bear was about to hurt her parents when she expresses her frustration with them, tells the bear to “stop it!” — and the bear, recognizing the latest threat to Dawn is itself, starts to attack itself before running off into the night.

As her parents tell themselves that was clearly the same bear in the news that was attacking residents (“Was it wearing a red shirt?”), they count their lucky stars it decided to leave and give Dawn the attention she was looking for the entire time… while we see the djinn bear, its stuffing bursting out of its belly, lying in an alley.

Like I said: unpredictable.

21. Frankenstein Undone #1 (2020)
All right, so maybe these polar bear cubs aren’t the scariest bears on the (ice) block. But the way they take to Frankenstein’s monster and give him a purpose for living, you just know that something scary is going to happen down the road.

Dark Horse’s Frankenstein Undone was intended to be a five-issue mini-series starring the Frankenstein monster of the Hellboy universe and serving as a prequel to 2015’s Frankenstein Underground. The first issue came out in January 2020, with subsequent issues delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The second issue came out in May of that year with the remaining three scheduled for the fall.

In June 2020, co-writer and Dark Horse editor Scott Allie was let go from the publisher after allegations of sexual abuse by a co-worker, and the mini-series was cancelled before the third issue could go out.
When co-writer Mike Mignola was asked whether he would return to the series at a later date either solo or with a different author, he said, “No, this story line doesn’t exist. Sorry. We all had a good long talk about it and everybody agreed that was for the best.”

22. Detective Comics #306 (1962)
Despite being just as powerful as Superman and having a similar tragic back story, the Martian Manhunter never seemed to click with Silver Age readers enough to get his own series. In fact, despite debuting in 1955, he didn’t score his own series (and a mini-series at that) until 1988. I wonder if pitting him against giant bank-robbing robot bears had anything to do with that.

Pretty sharp eyes on that fedora-wearing onlooker, that he can tell the denomination of the bills in the giant bear’s paws from that distance.

Now I want to sit in on the pitch meeting where the crook pushing for the giant bank-robbing robot bear convinced his buddies to buy into the scheme. “But why a bear, Charley?” “‘Cause no one messes with bears, that’s why!”

23. Green Lantern #28 (1964)
In “The House That Fought Green Lantern!”, our hero is on the case when a fugitive bank robber holes up inside a supposedly haunted house. You wouldn’t think a middle-aged guy in a suit would be much of a challenge for Green Lantern, but this is no ordinary house: not only is it tricked out with secret passageways and booby traps like a motorized stuffed bear that comes out of a wall, but for some unknown reason GL’s energy constructs come out tiny and ineffective while he’s inside the house.

Outside the house is another matter, and after he escapes the house he uses his ring to lift the house up off its foundation and spin it like a carnival ride gone haywire until the bank robber cries uncle. The end of the story shows GL figuring out why his ring behaved so strangely.

“The vibrations of the grandfather clock’s pendulum affected the gem of my power ring in such a way that it caused everything the ring formed to appear in miniature size!” he says. “The tick-tocking has stopped now so my ring is back to normal! It was a freak accident that will probably never happen again!” Sure. Totally plausible. And since it will probably never happen again, we’ll skip any questions like “How in the heck is that clock still in one piece after what Green Lantern just did to the entire house?”

24. Incredible Hulk #88 (2006)
We all have our favorite Hulk. There’s the Man-Child Hulk, Savage Hulk, Smart Hulk, Grey Hulk, Joe Fix-it Hulk, Barbarian Hulk… me, I’ve always been partial to the Hulk that just wants to be left alone. Because who can’t relate to that?

This issue finds Dr. Banner in the Alaskan wilderness, living in a cabin and Hulking out when he wants to go fishing with the local bears. His solitude is interrupted by a bush pilot who encourages him to come into town and socialize.

“Listen to me, Robert. Most fellas who come up here — an’ I’m pretty sure you’re one of ’em — come up here to forget somethin’. Whatever it is, that’s your business… but you gotta be careful — an’ I ain’t kiddin’ here — you gotta be careful to remember somethin’. You gotta remember your humanity.”

I have a feeling the good doctor knows a thing or two about that.

25. World’s Finest Comics #245 (1977)
“THE MAN BEAR STALKS AT MIDNIGHT.” That’s some mighty good stalking there, Man Bear.

In this issue, Green Arrow confronts Ursus, a talking man-bear who’s terrorizing hotels in the Catskills region of New York. Things don’t start out great for our archer on this splash page, and they don’t get any better; at one point, after receiving a thorough drubbing by our man-bear, he has to deal with an irate hotel manager who can’t believe GA is lying unconscious while he’s getting robbed: “You call yourself a hero?”

But getting beaten by a towering man-bear isn’t the reason why Green Arrow sucks in this story. (Hey, who among us would fare any better in a fight with a man-bear, boxing-glove arrow or no?)

No, he’s kind of irritating in this story because (1) he assumes “somebody made him a monster” and “forced him to rob that hotel” with zero evidence to support that conclusion (2) he allows a giant man-bear to get the drop on him in the middle of a forest during a stakeout where you’d think he’d be a little more alert and (3) he gets all “Women! Who can understand ’em?” when Dinah takes offense to his suggestion that she doesn’t need a job now that he’s got “more than enough cash for two.”

This story was just the start of a series of strips starring GA and Black Canary tracking down the person creating animal-human hybrids for kicks and giggles. Of course, his last name is Moreau, and of course our heroes track him down in Canada, that wretched hive of scum and villainy.

26. Jay Garrick: The Flash #2 (2023)
What’s this? The Golden Age Flash brought back in his own book to fight a giant talking robot bear in the middle of a shopping mall? JUST PUMP THAT SWEET STUFF RIGHT INTO MY VEINS!

27. Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer #1 (1950)
“A red-nosed reindeer isn’t afraid of anything!” You sure about that, Rudolph? GRUFF!

28. Action Comics #465 (1976)
“Because he’s Batman. Duh.”

I can’t decide which is the weirder part of this story, the fact that a junior-sized Flash fetched a boxing bear from the circus to fight a de-aged Batman just to prove to Superman he was the same Batman he had always known (which Superman confirmed easily enough by a quick peek under their masks and a few personal questions)… or that this was all part of Luthor’s evil scheme to de-age Superman so that he would be easier to beat in a fistfight.

Lex Luthor. Superman’s archest arch-nemesis. Giddy at the prospect of beating the stuffing out of a literal child. (A super-child, sure, but still… not a good look, Lex.)

29. Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees #1 (2023)
Serial killers are scary, right? And bears are scary. Now imagine a serial killer bear. Pretty scary, huh?

Patrick Horvath’s Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees is a comic that answers the burning question: “What if we took a character from one of those Richard Scarry picture books and turned them into a serial killer-slash-small town detective?”

From IDW Publishing:

“Don’t. Murder. The locals.

“This is small-town serial killer, upstanding citizen, and adorable brown bear Samantha Strong’s cardinal rule. After all, there’s a sea of perfectly ripe potential victims in the big city just beyond the forest, and when you’ve worked as hard as Sam to build a cozy life and a thriving business in a community surrounded by friendly fellow animal folk, warm décor, and the aroma of cedar trees and freshly baked apple pie… the last thing you want is to disturb the peace.

“So you can imagine her indignation when one of Woodbrook’s own meets a grisly, mysterious demise — and you wouldn’t blame her for doing anything it takes to hunt down her rival before the town self-destructs and Sheriff Patterson starts (literally) barking up the wrong tree.

“Live, laugh, shed blood. Dexter meets Richard Scarry’s Busy Town in writer-artist Patrick Horvath’s twisted debut of BENEATH THE TREES WHERE NOBODY SEES”

Or as comedian Patton Oswalt put it, “Finally, murder and forensics are adorable!”

30. Archie at Riverdale High #94 (1983)
In “How I Spent My Summer Vacation,” antics ensue when Jughead eats all the hot dogs he’s supposed to sell as part of his summer job and owes his boss $20 for the lost profits. He turns to Archie for help, who instead of lending his friend some cash hatches a scheme involving Reggie, a disguise, and a bear suit.

Their plan: while Reggie pretends to be a new member of Mr. Lodge’s country club, he makes a friendly wager with Veronica’s dad over a golf game… but before the game is over, Archie and Jughead will show up as a bear and rattle Mr. Lodge so much he’ll forfeit the game.

Things go as planned except for the teensy little hiccup of an actual bear showing up before the boys can put on their bear suit, causing Reggie to faint after the con is complete and he realizes he was just tussling with a real bear. Can’t blame him, really.

31. More Fun Comics #85 (1942)
If there’s a better way to celebrate the end of Bear Month than by chucking a polar bear at a bunch of illegal seal hunters, I can’t think of it.

In this story, Aquaman and his marine animal buddies foil a crew of seal hunters who are illegally killing seals using new electric guns that “kill seals without harming the expensive fur.”

After losing their bounty to Aquaman’s actions, the hunters — knowing about his need to stay in the water — trap him on a desert island to desiccate under a hot sun. This is why I never let my enemies know about my secret weakness. (It’s chocolate. But it’s okay letting you know that because we’re all friends here.)