Bash Helmet. His History in Briefs: Comic superhero Bash Helmet meets the Fiends of Dorothy ... and gets himself a sidekick

In the 1960s some of the most enduring villains introduced to readers of the newly eponymous comic Bash Helmet, were the Fiends of Dorothy - perversions of the popular L. Frank Baum characters given a little twist so that they fit right in with the world of Bash Helmet.

The Fiends of Dorothy returned frequently
throughout the years to battle our hero

A surviving page from the 1979 story ‘Blowing a Gale!’

With comic sales at a steady high, Pryce passed editorial duties on to his partner, Pu Yao-Yun. As an eighteen year old Thai boy, Pu was more in touch with a younger audience, and the older editorial team members valued his enormous input. Bud Demsky, then Vice President at Bona Ventures, remembers one board meeting held at an executive sauna in New York:

“We were all loudly arguing about how to make the stories more interesting when Pu quietly entered the steam room.

He winked at us all and said coyly, “If any of you are interested, I like lots of different partners”.

“Then he popped out again. It was a very insightful comment and, the very next issue, Bash received his first sidekick.”

That character was Ginger Crawley, a red-haired orphan living on the streets of New York. Ginger had a penchant for tying all sorts of elaborate knots which he liked to test on himself. In issue 20, Bash finds Ginger bound to a tree in Central Park. Mistakenly believing the boy had been kidnapped, the hero attempts to rescue him until Ginger explains the situation. Bash, recognising that he could use the boy’s talents in a number of ways, takes him under his wing and christens his young partner Bondage Boy.

Bash's junior partner Bondage Boy
was the star of Issue 23 from August 1964

Bondage Boy manages to rope
someone into joining him

For the next ten issues the boy bonder roamed the city with Bash, tying up numerous villains, sometimes against their will. But in the real world there was a growing level of concern expressed about this new junior hero.

Parents feared that children would start to identify with the youngster and want to emulate him. Horrified at the thought of their kids dying their hair ginger, adults petitioned Bona to get rid of the character. Demsky succumbed to the mounting pressure and, in a controversial storyline during issue 30, Bondage Boy tragically perished while attempting a monkey’s fist.