Friday Night Fights - Ladies' Night - Round 2 : Lightweight Division


As Bahlactus explains it, the primary rule to "Friday Night Fights - Ladies' Night" is that every entry must include a female fighter in the panel mix.

This week, I'm doing the bare minimum to meet that requirement. Literally.

Tonight's fight card is:


THE ATOM

VS.

MISS LILLY DE LA POOCHE


This scaled-down smackdown comes to us courtesy of Brave and the Bold#77, in a story called "So Thunders The Cannoneer" by Bob Haney, Ross Andru & Mike Esposito. The premise: Miss Lilly De La Pooche is a circus "little person" who is the smallest woman at the circus, until the arrival of a smaller competitor. Lilly's subsequent insecurity makes her easy prey for The Cannoneer, a thief who uses a "human cannonball" modus operandi. The Cannoneer promises to give Lilly a formula to make her even smaller than her competitor. It makes her smaller, all right -- six inches high! But the only way the Cannoneer will ever let her use the antidote is if she becomes his partner in crime.

(Yes, that's right. A human cannonball/thief who is enough of a biochemist to invent his own shrinking formula. It's Bob Haney, just go with it.)

Here Miss De La Pooche crosses paths with the Atom (you can just make her out in the upper right hand corner of panel 1). Now, Mr. Haney was known for giving us some of the cheesiest moments in DC's Silver and Bronze Age comics history. But, to my knowledge, this is the only time he has used actual cheese in a scene:

Ouch! Things don't look too "Gouda" for our Tiny Titan here!

Oh, and "she's too beautiful to hit"? Thank heaven Lilly was going up against Ray and not Hank Pym.

(Special thanks to The Comic Treadmill site.)