When you wear an outfit as weird as The Calculator’s, you deserve the title of Oddball of the Week. Join us as we spotlight one of the worst ideas of the Bronze Age.

It’s easy to dismiss the Calculator as a goofy comedy act, especially when you look at his early appearances in the late 1970s. If you haven’t seen it, Cracked lampooned the character with a hilarious video of the villain in full ‘70s costume at a job interview.

Nothing dates a character quite like this. As the story goes, the pocket calculator had become a fad in the mid-’70s.

DC Comics wanted to capitalize, which sounds so sad in hindsight, so Bob Rozakis and Mike Grell patterned a character after, of all things, the handheld calculator. Not only did The Calculator get a keypad on his chest, but he also had a large headpiece that extended from his back. The idea was that he could make anything out of light (thanks, comic book logic). All he needed to do was type in a word on his keypad, and a solid object was produced out of thin air.

DETECTIVE COMICS #463

Making objects from light in Green Lantern fashion, The Calculator would debut in 1976’s Detective Comics #463. Starting out as Noah Kuttler, he was a would-be villain with a long string of bad luck. Noah was beaten senseless time and again by established superheroes before he created his odd suit. As it turned out, it was all calculated, if you will. Even though he took his share of punches, Noah used the confrontations to analyze the heroes’ fighting techniques. Thus he earned the new moniker, The Calculator. 

For some very comic book reason, Calculator used his device and analytics to create force fields to protect him. The catch was that it only worked against those he had previously fought. As long as the heroes called in backup from someone new, Calculator didn’t stand a chance.

The graded copies of DC #463 earn more than you may realize. There hasn’t been a graded 9.8 to sell online in two years, but it sold for $675 in 2020.

IDENTITY CRISIS #1

Some bad characters become the butt of the joke. Then there are those who are the true bottom of the barrel (they might actually be under the barrel). Guys like Calculator don’t rank high enough to be the punchline, and fans widely forget about them. Although he didn’t completely disappear from comics, he became more obscure over the decades. 

Anytime you have a guy dressed in a black onesie with a giant calculator on his chest, it’s hard not to laugh. While he was a forgettable, lame villain for decades, the Calculator was reimagined as a scheming genius for the 21st Century.

As part of 2004’s Identity Crisis, The Calculator got a much-needed makeover. Around this time, Barbara Gordon, paralyzed since Killing Joke, transitioned to her new role as Oracle. She became the center of the Bat-Family’s information center. Noah Kuttler lost the cheesy costume and became the anti-Oracle, dishing out calculated answers to any question for villains willing to pay his lofty prices. 

Speaking of lofty prices, there was a suspicious 9.8 sale of an Identity Crisis #1 in April. By and large, you can find near-mint copies for around $50-$70. On April 22, a Heritage Auction netted $1,320 for a 9.8. Unless I am missing something, I have no idea why it would fetch anywhere near the ballpark of that astronomical figure. 

THE SOCIETY

Maybe Calculator is an Oddball winner, but if we see him in the DCEU, it would likely be in his modern form. Sure, the old Calculator suit would be great for laughs in a show like Peacemaker, but he might be better utilized as the scheming puppet master. In the comics, he has his own supervillain operation, The Society, and that wouldn’t be a bad addition to, say, the Suicide Squad franchise. Still, part of me wants to see that goofy costume.

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