Suddenly, the din of rock 'n' roll is in terrupted. From the loudspeaker come a furious flapping of wings and a fero cious cackle: "Bawk, bawk, bawk, baaawk—CHICKENMAN!" A background chorus proclaims: "He's everywhere! He's everywhere!" Well, not quite every where, but almost. In the past year, 149 U.S. radio stations have programmed Chickenman, a 2½-minute spoof of the Superman-Batman genre. Some cities have even played him nine times a day, seven days a week.
A change of pace from radio's hot-and-heavy barrage of records, news, and commercials, Chickenman was hatched 16 months ago on Chicago's WCFL. He is an ineffectual superhero, like television's Captain Nice and Mr. Terrific. Unlike them, Chickenman is genuinely witty. His real name is Benton Harbor, and his game is selling women's shoes in the Midland City department store, so he is available to fight "crime and/or evil" weekends only. "I don't want to be bugged at the store," he keeps having to remind the police commissioner.
Actually, in the 195 episodes of the serial so far, he has yet to solve a crime. Just when emergency strikes, the "fantastic feathered fighter" finds that his chicken suit has been lost by the cleaners or the zipper is stuck. During one flap, he accidentally glided through a closed window. "How do you do?" was his greeting. "I'm the wonderful white-winged warrior, and I think I'm bleeding to death." Of course, the police commissioner shrugs away the fact that since the coming of Chickenman, the "level of sin, debauchery and gambling" has increased. Good, he says, "we'll have tourists coming out of our ears."
Trooper 36-24-36. The originator of the series is Richard Orkin, 32, WCFL's director of creative production. A Yale Drama School dropout, he is also the voice of Chickenman and other male characters. The rest of the cast are Disk Jockey Jim Runyon, as the pomegranate-voiced announcer, and, in the female roles, Jane Roberts, WCFL's ex-traffic reporter ("Trooper 36-24-36").
Eight months ago, Orkin found himself "going buggy" over the series and abruptly stopped taping. Listeners and Chickenman fan clubs protested the abortive end. So stations that had already completed the 195 episodes started rerunning them. Orkin ponders launching a second cycle, but that would require bringing back Co-Stars Runyon and Roberts, who have since married and moved to Boston. In the mean time, Orkin has founded Amazon Ace, a cross between Tarzan and the Lone Ranger. Syndicated only six weeks ago the Ace and "his faithful Indian com panion Bernard" have already spread from WCFL Chicago to a nationwide chain of 20 cities.