Gone & Forgotten

TRULY GONE AND FORGOTTEN: THE EASTER BUNNY

2026-04-05T09:00:00.000-07:00

I bet you can see his rangey human wrists poking out from his elastic cuffs. *shudder*

The Easter Bunny

First appearance: Police Comics #18

Created by Frank Borth

The devil's bargain.
Here comes Peter Cottontail
Hoppin’ down the bunny trail
Hippity-Hoppity
He’s attempting to assassinate a prominent government figure
With a basket full of exploding eggs

That may not be how the song goes, but it’s how the story goes in Police Comics #18 (April 1943), when scantily-clad superheroine Phantom Lady faces the fiendishly fuzzy scheme of an explosives-happy ex-con in an ersatz Easter Bunny costume.

The Easter Bunny – aka Bunny Rabbit, aka Bunny Man, aka “Uncle Wiggeley” [sic] - is actually aka “Killer Dan,” a vicious criminal who seeks revenge on the judge who sentenced him, and who is now Senator Ted Knight (Caddyshack, Too Close for Comfort).

To this end, Killer Dan infiltrates the annual Easter Egg Hunt on the grounds of what I have to imagine is Senator Knight’s own personal mansion, because I don’t think they just give you a mansion when you’re a Senator. They can’t just give mansions to every elected official. The paperwork alone would be brutal.

Get. His. Ass.

Killer Dan’s devious plan to avenge himself upon Senator Knight begins with the bunny rabbit costume and a basketful of exploding golden eggs. These, Killer Dan hides all around the estate, alongside harmless normal Easter eggs. Then, he encourages the children to find those golden eggs and return them to him in exchange for a live pet rabbit. Then, once he has recollected all of the explosive golden eggs, he gifts them to the Senator as a centerpiece for his Easter dinner table, and then leaves before they blow up.

How long do you have to pause
behind a bush in order to become
Phantom Lady? How long would
it take me, for instance?

This plan contains a lot of moving parts, especially considering that Killer Dan had to somehow get himself hired for this gig in the first place. Then, you add in the cost of the explosives, food and housing for those pet rabbits, plus the costume rental, and then all the time invested in recollecting the eggs – buddy, next time, just shoot him. It’s easier.

Unfortunately for Killer Dan, the Senator’s lovely daughter Sandra “Phantom Lady” Knight also happens to be in attendance. Encouraged by her fiancee, Don, to try her luck at finding a golden egg, Sandra manages to inadvertently spoil the whole scheme when she finds one that ticks. Quickly, she complicates matters further by tricking herself out like a day-glo hooker and launching into action as Phantom Lady!

The Bunny’s hole-filled homicide plot comes apart as Sandra exposes the big lagomorph’s alter-ego, and then proceeds to re-scatter the explosives-filled golden eggs all around the lawn while Killer Dan makes his escape in the Senator’s car.

Falling from the Phantom Lady’s hand, one golden egg succumbs to the gentle roll of the Senator’s driveway and bounces in front of the speeding escape vehicle, blowing the evil Easter Bunny to stuffed smithereens. At the cost of his car, the Senator’s life is spared, and Phantom Lady gets to rack up another victory which isn’t all that bad when you consider that her only super-power at the time was being cold. Easter is saved!

Low-effort superheroics pay off.

THE SPIRIT (1987)

2025-09-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

“I thought you were a pervert” -- “No ma'am, I’m a crimefighter”

In 1987, the ABC television network succumbed to a powerful wave of popular pressure from the nerd community. Comic fans had gotten wind of the existence of a live-action adaptation of Will Eisner’s The Spirit, filmed as a pilot for a possible series and subsequently shelved. The finished project was reportedly a dud, but fan-sponsored petitions and letter-writing campaigns nonetheless begged for a taste.

In response to the pleas of countless fervid aficionados, ABC replied, in their way: “Be careful what you wish for.”

The Spirit, shirtless, in a big cake.

Shown once on July 31, 1987, and then returned to its resting place, the actual pilot is a mixed bag. Sporting a script from celebrated action film scribe Stephen E. DeSouza, and relying heavily on the Kitchen Sink Spirit collections for its aesthetic and atmosphere, the finished product is surprisingly well-informed not only about the Spirit himself, but about Eisner’s narrative techniques and tropes of the strip.

There’s plenty of pouring rain, there’s mounds of moody shadows, and in his first depicted fight, police officer Denny Colt – played by former “Flash Gordon” Sam Jones – gets up with the Spirit’s trademark fat lip and a puffed-up cheek. A torture sequence near the end of the film could have been clipped directly from Eisner’s most lurid compositions.

To wit.

At the same time, while the Eighties were infamous for the preponderance of cocaine in the film and television industries, the set drug of choice on this project may have been prozac. The production stumbles with uneven pacing, the beats fizzle, there are laughs but they tend to hang in the air, and it just can’t seem to wake up.

Streaming services (and a limited DVD release) have given the notorious adaptation a second life, making it available for viewers for the first time since its singular broadcast. Here’s what you can expect:

The Spirit begins, like many things in life, with a killing in rural Oregon. Police officer Denny Colt (Sam Jones) arrives in Central City to investigate the murder of his mentor, veteran cop turned true crime author William Sevrin (Phillip Baker Hall).

There, he’s ferociously flirted with by a scintillating Ellen Dolan (Nana Visitor), lectured by the blustering Commissioner (Garry Walberg), and nearly-murdered by a henchman secretly in the employ of the notorious P’Gell, played by Laura Robinson who, according to her biography on IMDB anyway, invented the board game Balderdash.

Ebony White is replaced on the original cast by a character named “Eubie,” played as a good-hearted and quick-witted street kid by Boomer Robinson, so you can relax.

Eubie razzes the commish.

Although, while the more egregious elements of Ebony White’s notorious caricature are thankfully set aside, it is worth mentioning that Eubie is portrayed as a cheap hustler, and also on two different occasions he gets racially profiled – by the good guys no less.

Still, it’s Eubie who happens to be in Wildwood Cemetery when Denny Colt – shot, drowned, and believed dead after crossing one of P’Gell’s flunkies – stumbles ashore, alive!

Eubie helps the healing hero set up shop in a surprisingly spacious tomb on site, which they promptly decorate like a TGIFridays. From this vantage point, they plot a war against crime, and even get to witness Denny’s own funeral. Ellen Dolan delivers a strangely horny eulogy.

In fact. everything Ellen Dolan does is strangely horny.

Strategizing, Denny decides to pursue justice against his would-be killers in disguise as The Spirit! This is celebrated with an energetic montage!

Denny Colt’s tombstone explodes! The Spirit is in silhouette! He’s knocking dudes left and right! There are newspapers everywhere, they come spinning right atcha, and all the headlines are like “The Spirit Fucks, He’s Rad, YEAH!”

It’s frenetic, it’s visually dynamic, and the theme song is playing the whole time, and it should have been great but now is when I mention that the theme song could lullaby the fussiest baby in history headfirst into slumberland. It could have a little more “oomph,” is how I mean. Picture the theme for Entertainment Magazine, on quaaludes.

They had to print so many fake newspapers for this scene.

The Spirit quickly becomes the hero of Central City and the bane of P’Gell and her partner (played by Niles from the Nanny) in an art forgery scheme of enormous proportions.

The climax comes when P’Gell and her hunky henchmen set in motion a plan to destroy the evidence of their extensive forgeries by blowing up the whole Central City Museum – with an all-ages charity event going on inside!

So that’s the Spirit – now, what exactly was wrong with it?

The show's propensity for bruises and blood was allegedly a turnoff for ABC

Much of the blame is typically laid at the feet of Sam Jones, a serviceable-but-stiff leading man who was reportedly forced on the production. It’s true that the role would’ve truly sung under someone like Bruce Willis, or Bruce Campbell – hell, why not Bruce Vilanch! – but they still coulda done a lot worse. Jones comes alive in the action sequences, he’s not unfunny, and he seems perfectly happy to get his shirt off now and again, which is important for the whole Moonlighting-esque quality of the production.

Also, Jones sports a kind of physique you simply don’t see on television much anymore. He’s got a reasonable amount of body hair and he’s pretty well defined, but not in the fashion of modern male action heroes, where they're so loaded with roids and water pills that they look like a fire hydrant.

Conversely, there’s nothing wrong with Nana Visitor in the role of Ellen Dolan.

Ellen Dolan, imagining all of the coitus interruptus that awaits her.

As the Spirit’s love interest, she’s flirty, funny, charismatic, and has her engine running for the show’s entire one hundred and nine minutes.

Someone has to provide the will-they-won’t-they intrigue of your average romantic comedy, after all, and it’s Ellen Dolan’s hot tub hangouts, scandalously ripped skirts, and platter-sized bedroom eyes that do most of the heavy lifting. It’s only a shame she’s largely doing it all in an empty room to a brick wall.

In The Spirit's defense, sex in this era of television was a minefield.

Smack in the middle of the Reagan Years, in the full flush of the AIDS epidemic, perfectly normal levels of televised spice were handled with a chaste and almost apologetic approach. Visitor’s flawless “I’m tryna FUCK here” expression, repeatedly employed during assorted interrupted entanglements with the show’s pulchritudinous protagonist, is a sexual revolution of its own.

Plus, whatever this is.

The real problem with ABC’s The Spirit might be that network television in the late eighties was simply inimical to Will Eisner’s world of bathos, bondage, bruises and black ink.

Whenever the show wasn’t intentionally evoking Eisnerian tableaus, it defaulted to unremarkable broadcast television. When there weren’t shadows, there was only washed-out set lighting. Step out of the show’s imaginatively recreated Wildwood Cemetery and find yourself at any number of bland, generic shooting locations around Los Angeles.

Basically, whenever the show wasn’t trying very hard to emulate The Spirit’s source material, it became nothing. It was like getting off a ride at Disneyland and suddenly finding yourself in an empty conference room at the airport Radisson. That’s no way to get a series off the ground.

"Forget it, Ellen -- it's Wildwood."

Footnote:

It is worth giving The Spirit one last accolade – it certainly preceded some other things. Specifically, the show predates Batman (1989) by a few years, but captures that same ambiguous sense of era, seeming to be both contemporary and set in the 1940s at the same time. Even more specifically, DeSouza’s script had the main baddie escape via ambulance, which he later repurposed in Die Hard!

Sex in the Comics (1972)

2025-08-27T08:30:00.000-07:00

“Bat-Pussy.”

According to historians of pornographic film, that’s the title – and titular star – of the very first comic strip character porn parody ever committed to film.

The excruciatingly amateur production – ostensibly a sexy satire of the live-action 1966 Batman television show – was evidently filmed sometime before 1972, probably somewhere in Texas, using almost exclusively anonymous actors and predating a contemporary cottage industry of superhero-inspired skin flicks by a few decades.

As far as motion pictures go, “Bat-Pussy” is not considered a work of art. While the film seems to have its stupefying quirks, practically every online review - no matter how accommodating – takes pains to mention its relative unwatchability.

Lookit that guy's little Hank Hill butt.

But also released to adult theaters in 1972 was another adult film with a comic-strip sensibility that may be more deserving of the title of being the first funny pages-inspired fuck film – and an educational one at that!

Entitled “Sex in the Comics,” this feature-length anthology is not only a collection of x-rated vignettes drawn directly from the Tijuana Bibles, it’s also a pretty decent history of the medium!

It'll only get worse from here.

For those not in the know, Tijuana Bibles are, in brief, notorious.

Pocket-size pornographic pamphlets featuring risque romps in explicitly illustrated detail, the books were a secretly-salacious staple of mid-1900s newsstands.

Popular newspaper strip characters were often the protagonists of the eight-page pornos, including uninhibited versions of Mutt and Jeff, Popeye and, god help us, Little Orphan Annie, among many others.

“Sex in the Comics” adapts several actual Tijuana Bibles into short, explicit live-action segments, and they do not skimp on detail.

Each adaptation is introduced with a title card that painstakingly recalls the original cover of the source material, and the stories were direct transcriptions - down to the stilted and slangy dialogue.

A title card screen from Sex in the Comics and the Tijuana Bible cover that inspired it.

The movie also leans into a bold, colorful palette with their wardrobe and set design. It successfully evokes the visual language of cartoons, at least as well as you’d see in any given community theatre’s production of You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown.

Well-known comics characters depicted doffing their duds in Sex in the Comics are some of the funnies’ most famous stars.

The film includes bowdlerized versions of newspaper mainstays Barney Google, Betty Boop, Dick Tracy, Dagwood (and Blondie), Jiggs (from Bringing Up Father), Moon Mullins, and Nancy’s aunt Fritzi Ritz. Other newsprint nudies which might be less familiar to modern readers included Dixie Dugan, Etta Kett, Toots and Casper, Salesman Sam and a guy I can’t believe anyone wanted to see with his pants off, Major Hoople from Our Boarding House.

More title cards from Sex in the Comics

Is there a downside to all of this attention to detail? Yes, very much so.

In order to estimate the exaggerated appearance of highly-stylized characters like Moon Mullins, Barney Google or god help us again Major Hoople, the male performers are frequently fitted with off-putting prosthetics – by which I mostly mean “masks” but it doesn’t stop there. For a hardcore porno, there are a lot of fake dicks in this thing.

Jesus Christ.

In any case, what’s most interesting about Sex in the Comics is its elaborate framing device.

Serving simultaneously as an interstitial cooldown period between blocks, and also as an informative introduction to the history of Tijuana Bibles, it begs to be said: This porno is a real love letter to comics.

In fact, whoever put this movie together (if the credits are to be believed, it’s the writing team of “Muff & Pervertt”) cared enough about the verisimilitude of the framing sequence to get a real actor involved!

James R.Sweeney probably isn’t a name you’ll recognize, but he’s a working actor with a decent IMDB rap sheet, and he brings stage-worthy chops to his strictly non-participatory role.

James R. Sweeney as cartoonist Trake Johnson and I-dunno-who as the lady but she gets naked real fast.

Sweeney plays Trake Johnson, a veteran cartoonist who serves as narrator and guide for the whole film, just like the Stage Manager in Our Town.

Johnson is being interviewed about his beloved cartoon creation “Pinky the Cat,” but thinking of his past serves only to inspire a sudden nostalgic recollection of the dirty little comic books of his youth.

“But wait,” replies his lovely lady interviewer, “It’s very hot in here. Mind if I take this off?”

In a very comic booky kind of storytelling device, Johnson is depicted in different outfits depending on the era he's discussing.

From there, Johnson launches into a narration which serves as a perfectly informative anecdotal history of Tijuana Bibles. Much of the detail iterated in the pornographic film may not exactly be historically accurate, but I suspect you already knew that about pornographic films.

Nonetheless, pains are taken to contextualize the Bibles to the culture of the 20th century, destigmatize the concept, and craft a coherent narrative about its professionals and publishers. I don't think a lot of porn employs archival footage, but this one sure does!

"While all of this happened, George served as an Air Raid Warden..."

There are also many full-screen depictions of pages from the original Tijuana Bibles, obviously obtained from a practically mint condition, and depicting some of the nastiest cartooning I am sorry to say I’ve seen in the art form.

Still, you have to be impressed with the film’s dedication to celebrating its subject matter.

It’s surely in no small part owing to Sweeney’s acting prowess that his character’s lengthy monologue about the rise and fall of filthy comics is a compelling narrative with some fine turns of phrase.

Describing the decline of the medium as “A lost art now. Apple blossoms in the spring,” seems like rarified language for a blue movie, but you have to appreciate it.

Also, there is a "Smut Hound."

It’s very easy to find a copy of “Sex in the Comics” online, if you’re so inclined. And while it’s not an imperishable gem of cinema -- adult or otherwise -- it’s still an astonishing little oddity at the greasy intersection of two filthy little industries, which has its own appeal!

Lastly, for those who simply must know: Is it hot?

Listen, it’s not for me to judge. Everything floats somebody’s boat. But, still, regardless of the surprisingly elucidatory storytelling, my opinion is that the male actors running around in those ghastly masks surely render the entire film, for even the most compulsive onanist, at the very least, in the words of comedian Sean Lock, a challenging wank.

*wink*

Truly Gone & Forgotten : Diamond Jack

2025-08-21T06:00:00.000-07:00

DIAMOND JACK
Created by Gus Ricca
Appears in Slam-Bang Comics #1-7, Wow Comics #1 (Fawcett, 1940)

Fawcett Comics was a font of magic words and expensive goods.

The line boasted, among others, ancient Egyptian sorcerer Ibis the Invincible and his all-powerful golden Ibistick (which would be a good nickname for a dick, consider it for yourself or your loved ones). It boasted a veritable card catalog of magic words between the Shazam clan and their foes. And there are others in the same vein, but less well-known -- but still mighty magical -- were characters like Boy Wizard Atom Blake and necromancer of the nightlife, Diamond Jack!

Speaking of magic words, these are the first words spoken by Diamond Jack in his feature, to a gang of armed crooks. I think we can all agree that this is very badass.

Gifted a powerful enchanted diamond by an unnamed magician some years prior, Diamond Jack takes it upon himself to use the ornament solely “to aid the worthy.”

And that is more or less it for the origin! Everything after this introductory paragraph in DJ’s inaugural adventure is glamorous nightclubs and Jack using his magic gem to enact bizarre punishments on weird crooks.

And weird they can be!

The criminal and the supernatural underworlds of Jack’s stamping grounds appear to rub shoulders at every level of society. The stage magicians at the nightclubs which Jack so often frequents know him as a legitimate and powerful wielder of “real magic,” for instance.

At the behest of a trio of cheap thugs, a skid row witch battles Jack with dragons of smoke. The socialite Queen of Vampires, Maria, even manages to turn Jack, briefly, into a dreaded nosferatu! Little wings grew out of the back of his topcoat. It was adorable.

More bizarre foes included The Green Devil (“Master of the Dead Men of Death Island”), the ancient idol Khor, and The Sky Demon (backed up by an air force of winged gorillas).

“In many ways, that gunman knew me better than I know myself …”

Like fellow Fawcett Comics magician-hero Ibis the Invincible, the powers conferred upon Jack by his magic accoutrement are seemingly limitless.

At the very least, the gem has made Jack “physically strong and mentally beyond all mortals,” but that represents only the tip of the iceberg. A partial list of powers manifested through the diamond include, but are not limited to:

Turn Bullets into Flowers
Turn Gunsmoke into Snakes
Change Guns to Candy
Punch Crooks in Face
Heal Wounds, Grant Long Life
Impersonate Smoke Demons
Neutralize Spellbooks
Extract Vision from the Dead
Turn Zombies to Ash
Turn People Into Ferns
Materialize Tigers From Nowhere
Summon Lightning
Cure Paralysis
Awwwwww SUFFRAGETTE!

If the diamond’s raw magical energy fails to prove sufficient to crush crooks and evil magicians on its own, Jack is also outfitted with a few magic words -- “KZAT” places a magical sword in his hands, “KZAR” creates a parachute out of nothing, and “ADKEHL” creates a destructive blast and is also the sound you make when you try to hold in a sneeze.

This is what everyone who asks to see the manager in a restaurant thinks they look like…

* * *

Thanks to the Digital Comics Museum for scanning, uploading and making available these comics. Please visit and support Digital Comics Museum.

Truly Gone & Forgotten : Koroo the Black Lion

2025-08-19T06:00:00.000-07:00

Koroo the Black Lion
Creator unknown
Appears in Cyclone Comics #1-5 (1940)

He stalks the unknowable jungles, king of the savage land beyond civilization. Superstitious man fears him as a terrible predator, but among the beasts of the dense and endless forest, he is “monarch of all he surveys!” He is KOROO, THE BLACK LION, and he’s in danger -- of becoming a backup character in his own strip.

The Wreck of the Medusa, with Lion (1819)

Appearing in five subsequent issues of Cyclone Comics in 1940, Koroo was an oddity among an increasingly superhero-laden shelf.

Featuring a protagonist who couldn’t -- and needn’t -- speak put Koroo in company with a very small coterie of similar animal acts (Fiction House’s “Simba” was a longer-lived variation on the theme, although he didn’t boast Koroo’s cool paintjob).

While other animal acts in comics were largely of the explicitly anthropomorphic variety, Koroo hewed a little closer to the adventures suitable for Tarzan. A terse and brutal introduction featured little more than the black lion hunting prey and killing a rival predator.

King of the Wabizi jungles, Koroo was the hero in a world where nature was the law and men were the villain -- white men, in particular, and invariably hunters or trappers.

What a cliffhanger!

When Koroo eventually encounters a trio of hunters encamped in his domain, it actually goes poorly -- until the arrival of Tira, a character I think we can best understand as being a genuinely weird chick.

Described as “The strange white goddess of the Wabizi,” Tira aids Koroo in his war against poachers and subsequently exhibits some nearly-supernatural influence over him.

Tira also boasts influence over an entire menagerie of other jungle beasts, all of whom have signed up with her army: Her ape general Gobo, Moku the baboon, Heeta the panther, the snake Sith, a monkey named Kiko, an ostrich named Roger, Bauble the octopus, Snitchy the chameleon, the Polar Bear Twins, Slimy the Vomiting Capybara and a sort-of centaur where the horse part is a zebra and the man part is a penguin and it's called Pebra.

I started making those up about halfway through the list. For fun, see if you can figure out where the fictional animals began! Hint: It was Roger.

Living up to her promise to appoint a diverse Cabinet.

Quickly, Tira’s problems become the focus of the strip and Koroo is relegated to lieutenant status in his own feature.

Nonetheless he signs on to Tira’s war against The White Man, which I totally ‘get,’ I really do.

Tira’s backstory becomes increasingly important to the strip as well. Stepdaughter of a vicious monkey-trapper named Black Burton, Tira flees his vile boat full of caged monkeys, taking many monkeys with her.

From there, she works her ass off, really putting in the hours. Then, after a few positive performance reviews, and a little time in a management training mentorship program, she finally graduates from Friend of Monkeys to Queen of the Whole Jungle!

Koroo had to take a leak and missed some plot points.

The ultimate battle wraps up as Black Burton reappears, killing the ape general Gobo, while two of the white hunters have thrown his lot in with Tira and her animal army. Koroo earns back his masthead, last seen leaping from a precarious branch and descending on the river vessel which carries Black Burton and his men. I assume Koroo gives them a good talking-to.

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Thanks to the Digital Comics Museum for scanning, uploading and making available these comics. Please visit and support Digital Comics Museum.

Truly Gone & Forgotten : Lee Granger, Jungle King

2025-08-14T06:00:00.000-07:00

The Jungle King’s gated community.

LEE GRANGER, JUNGLE KING
Created by Manly Wade Wellman and Jack Binder
Appears in Slam-Bang Comics #1-7, Master Comics #7-10 (Fawcett, 1940-1941)

Scientist-Adventurer Lee Granger parachutes into a “pygmy village” in Africa after vicious slavers bomb his airplane. It’s a tale as old as time and also, probably, the best thing to ever happen to the giant, strapping scientist.

While the locals were unfriendly at first, Lee saves the life of the King after the regent stumbles into one of his own soldier’s poisoned spear-tips. In gratitude, they allow him to gentrify their village … with super-science!

In short order (haha), the rudimentary collection of jungle shelters has been overrun with tract homes and paved streets, none of which the natives need but they at least pretend to like it.

A city hall is erected, Granger builds a laboratory, and educates the community that is now under his protection as to the secrets of civilization. “He teaches them about domesticated animals,” explains a busy caption in the midst of a montage, “Trains them to smelt and forge iron, and introduces them to the marvels of science.” Probably they also learn to code.

Jungle King’s white African villagers.

In fact, he introduces them to the marvels of science so hard that they turn into white people after a few issues, with no explanation. (Well, that is to say — you know the real explanation, but there was no in-story explanation).

From the Jungle King’s third or fourth appearance, the indigenous African people over whom he presides, I think, might be from Norway. It’s genuinely hard to say whether this is more palatable than the original setup, although it puts an end to difficult visuals where a stern and impassive Granger directs his black villagers in their back-breaking labors…

One of the Jungle King’s other miracles of science involves performing a peculiar surgery on a wild lion in order to give it the gift of speech. This majestic beast, bridging the gap between animal and man with the power of expression, capable of giving voice to its deepest, most unknowable, most atavistic thoughts is named -- “Eric.”

Well, that just about covers the basics. Thanks Eric!

Eric is frequently the high point of any Lee Granger adventure.

While the strip as a whole is taking its white machismo very seriously, Eric provides hilariously prosaic interjections. Many scenes will be suddenly interrupted by a snarling lion ejecting itself from the camouflage of tall grass only to say something handy to the plot like “There’s trouble up north.” Thanks Eric.

Unlike your average Tarzan-style superhero, Granger relies on his scientific inventions as much as his physical powers and mastery of jungle skills.

He invents giant arrows to take down magical djinns, and flies through the air on a biplane-backpack.

He’s also not the only white jungle hero occupying this particular stretch of the jungle. Lee faces off against a human woman in a Busby Berkeley outfit who commands an army of giant ants under the earth, and allies himself with Nedda the Elephant Queen, who sounds hilarious.

If the generally prosaic Jungle King is to be remembered beyond the intriguing but largely undelivered-upon premise of “JUNGLE SCIENCE!” and a talking lion with an insurance agent’s first name, it would have to be this panel. Has any story in the history of Noble Savage storytelling ever managed to tell on itself so concisely as in this exchange?

Hoo boy.

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Thanks to the Digital Comics Museum for scanning, uploading and making available these comics. Please visit and support Digital Comics Museum.

Truly Gone & Forgotten : Mekano

2025-08-12T06:00:00.000-07:00

Mekano, doing what good robots do — refusing to step on a small child at the last moment.

Mekano
Created by Bob Oksner
Appears in Wonder Comics #1 (1944)

What stands eight feet tall, has metal arms as thick as pylons, leers through dead indigo eyes, grins a metal rictus of sharp iron fangs, and is also -- according to its biggest fan -- “practically human?” It’s no human that I’ve ever met, but it IS Mekano the Wonder Robot!

This is a metaphor for puberty.

Like other robot superheroes of the era, Mekano obviously draws his inspiration from Elektro, the seven foot-tall star of the 1939 and 1940 World’s Fairs.

Chromium characters like Jerry Siegel’s Robotman or Quality Comics’ unsettling Bozo the Iron Man were reminiscent of Elektro in a multitude of fashions, not the least of which being that both Elektro and Robotman boasted pet robot dogs.

Constructed for Westinghouse Electric’s World’s Fair pavillion, Elektro was capable of a few simple mechanical marvels -- he spoke from a record containing a vocabulary of 700 words, could distinguish between colored lights, lift his arms above his head, smoke a cigarette and blow up a balloon. I know it sounds like I made up the last two features to be funny but, nope, he had lungs. Human lungs (Okay, that part I made up).

However, he couldn’t bust through a building, rout a Nazi armada, or make terrifying eyes at a helpless lady newshawk -- for that, you need Mekano!

Good heavens, that is disquieting.

Created by inventor and electrical engineer Bill Foster, the remarkable robot Mekano -- a terrifying titan colored an unappetizing indigo and exuding malice from every seam, if we’re being fair -- is capable of some similarly humble stunts as its idol, Elektro.

Counting on his fingers and sputtering a soul-gripping “HELLO -- GLAD -- TO -- SEE -- YOU --” from his lipless maw, Mekano stays on display for public review (like Elektro, at the World’s Fair -- the famous Perisphere and Trylon are even visible in the background). Unfortunately, Mekano has only one fan, and no more.

Conversely, his one fan is Tommy Clark. And Tommy is SO! INTO! MEKANO! UNNNGH!

If that's love, then I've
never been in love before.

Tommy goes so far in his fandom that he actually gets into a fight with a full-grown adult member of the unappreciative audience, which earns him Bill Foster’s friendship. The pair feed each others’ sense of enthusiasm, and soon Bill is fired up about straight-up makin’ Terminators!

Dedicating themselves to improving Mekano’s capabilities - from novelty to an independently moving and maybe even *thinking* juggernaut of relentless steel and circuitry -- they also pick up a third human member for their cast, Sandra Kent (of the Tribune!) who smells a scoop!

Things go well for Team Mekano until Billy gets a little frisky with the “Go And Rampage And Destroy Things” button, which I can’t believe they even installed in the first place.

This sends Mekano on a rager throughout the streets of the city, destroying property and terrifying passers-by. Bill, himself passing by at the best possible time, sees his pet project curbstomping a nine year-old girl, and hurriedly shuts down the amok mass of metal with a garage door opener he keeps in his pocket.

On the plus side, Sandra got her scoop!

The now-deactivated menace is taken into police custody, and is promptly thereafter lost to Nazi agents. Is this what we pay taxes for?

To ensure that Mekano can be used as a Nazi weapon against the forces of the free world, Bill is also abducted for his unique scientific understanding of his robot. Tommy and Sandra sneak on board the ship being used to haul the stolen cargo (and on which Bill is getting tortured a little bit. You know, informally tortured).

Mekano, have you been drinking?

This, naturally, turns out to be the Nazi’s downfall. Once back in the European theater Bill rigs a special voice control on Mekano which not only makes him more responsive -- it seems to germinate the seed of that independent intelligence Tommy had always been so hype about. Uh oh.

I’ve seen Terminator, you’ve seen Terminator, we all probably have also seen Terminator 2, I never saw T3 and I think there’s a T4 and I heard there was a Genisys, or Genysis? Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that we’ve all seen a sufficient amount of assorted Terminator-related media to know that a thinking giant robot that only knows how to destroy is problematic.

Nonetheless, Mekano wipes the beach with Nazi soldiers during a fortuitously simultaneous Allied landing.

Despite having wandered well out of Bill Foster’s voice control, Mekano manages to sort his targets accurately without any additional input, which seems alarming. The robot sure cleans house on the Nazis, literally crushing them under his menacing metal boot. Mekano strikes a blow for Democracy! Here’s hoping he never turns on us!

Mekano was the creation of Bob Oksner, a legendary DC Comics artist whose work typically graced the company’s licensed humor properties -- assorted titles featuring Dobie Gillis, Sgt.Bilko, Pat Boone, Welcome Back Kotter, Bob Hope and Jerry Lewis.

While Mekano is pure action-adventure, it moves with the urgently frivolous pace of Oksner’s comical voice. The captions in particular seem to have no time to waste. Their tone is so urgent that it seems admonishing -- “why are you looking up here? The story is down there! Meanwhile! That’s what Meanwhile means!!” Assembled together, they become a manic tone poem. Please enjoy:

There’s no second adventure for Mekano.

Despite being part of a “future [which] science hopes for--” the big indigo nightmare never manages to get past its present. If I had to guess what kept Mekano from showing his terrifying head a second time, it would be that Tommy hit the “Run Around And Murder Everybody” button again and there wasn’t anything to show in Mekano’s second appearance except crime scene photos.

* * *

Thanks to the Digital Comics Museum for scanning, uploading and making available these comics. Please visit and support Digital Comics Museum.

Truly Gone & Forgotten : The Tulpa of Tsang

2025-08-07T05:30:00.000-07:00

“Save it, hotshot. I got a Tulpa chest.”

The Tulpa of Tsang
Created by Norman Nodel and Lionel March
Appears in Colossus Comics #1 (1940)

A “Tulpa” is a being manifested through thought, or will -- I’ll be a poor instructor on the subject, go ask your Uncle Wikipedia. Whatever the case, it’s an esoteric concept for most, but might be more familiar to contemporary comic readers through the metaphor of Grant Morrison’s “Fiction Suit” -- a manifestation of himself outside of himself, independently capable of experiencing and interacting with the world. Deep stuff. Thoughtful. Hot shit with the Theosophists of the early 20th Century, and you oughta read what Alvin Schwartz had to say about sharing a taxi with one.

Also, you could use them to fight Nazis for gold.

At least, that’s what you learn from The Tulpa of Tsang! Arguably, special operative Bart London is the hero of the story, as the Allied Intelligence Officer is the one having the life-and-death shootouts with the baddies.

He’s the also the guy who plummets to his death if the lama has a snack.

Those baddies are a Nazi officer named Wolfgang and his partner Shia, described as a “robber-baron.” Together, the two make for a lousy Neil Simon comedy but for an excellent conspiracy to rob the Tibetan temple at Gartok of its valuable gold!

The story is joined in situ, with London in close pursuit of the villains. In short order, he finds himself in need of rescue as the gold-hungry nogoodniks dash off for their prize.

Yep.

Rescue comes in the form of the Tibetan monk Tsang. Although Tsang is no friend of Shia’s, he’s also no good in fight -- so he offers London the loan of a fresh Tulpa!

Concentrating in meditation, Tsang manifests a dark-eyed, bald-headed giant of a man from under a nearby statue. Bulletproof and nameless, the Tulpa plays a role somewhere between London’s sidekick and magic genie.

Being a mystical creature in origin, the Tulpa is able to perform feats of tremendous strength, can run at breathtaking speed, and defy gravity.

This last talent almost becomes a fatal liability when the Tulpa’s one tragic flaw manifests. While carrying Bart up a treacherous cliff, the Tulpa vanishes -- Tsang’s concentration had been broken, and would take an hour to re-manifest the much-needed Tulpa!

Luckily, Bart survives, and Tulpa re-appears just in time to free the agent from a pit of vipers. Furthermore, he goes on to grab handfuls of the vipers and throw them at his enemies. You have to like Tulpa’s style, you have to give him that much.

He’s back … with snakes!

In fact, the Tulpa is pretty sassy. When a disrespectful guard blocks Tulpa’s entry to a lamissary by sneering “The lama’s at prayer with the reborn mice. He’ll see no one,” Tulpa retorts by chucking the guard down a well. Good for you.

Further peril is exacerbated as Tsang collapses from hunger while the final battle is being fought many miles away, causing Tulpa to vanish. Luckily, he returns in time to make up for it, first by smothering a hand grenade with a feather pillow and then also by putting Shia’s whole head in a pot of molten gold. There’s that style I was talking about!

A sample action scene from The Tulpa of Tsang.

Creator Norman Nodell carried on to bring this sort of sophistication to the pages of Classics Illustrated. Meanwhile, the Tulpa of Tsang didn’t go on at all, ending with Colossus Comics’ sole issue. Gone now, faded away, like a manifested entity brought into existence by a distracted monk ...

* * *

Thanks to the Digital Comics Museum for scanning, uploading and making available these comics. Please visit and support Digital Comics Museum.

Truly Gone & Forgotten : Tornado Tom

2025-08-05T06:00:00.000-07:00

Tornado Tom

Creator unknown

Appears in Cyclone Comics #1-5 (1940)

Emerging unhurt from a spinning cyclone and boasting strange new powers is farmhand Tom Kenny -- Tornado Tom to his friends -- and he’s a fink!

Tornado Tom survives this singular experience in the pages of Cyclone Comics -- a book which gives away a pretty major spoiler right in the title, if you think about it. The fulsome farmhand is described as having been “picked up by a cyclone, whirled about for hours in the air and eventually dropped uninjured in another state,” after which he apparently “has absorbed something of the character of the great wind itself.”

Tornado Tom moonlights for Lyft.

What the text means by this is that Tom inherits not only an array of powers -- “Physical match for a dozen ordinary men and great speed,” according to one caption -- but also the unpredictable violence of the wind.

On more than one occasion, Tom responds to even a minor insult by starting a major league brawl. His hair-trigger temper makes him perfect for a roving hero, however, which is good fortune for the newly-amnesiac hero. Since his high-wind walkabout, Tom has forgotten his previous life entirely.

It seems that spinning around in a tornado about six billion times might just goof your brain a little.

Recalling nothing but his name, Tom often mentions that he may have a mother out there somewhere. We all do, Tom, we all do.

Tom’s adventures keep him in rural communities and modestly-bustling midwestern cities. He’s portrayed as a journeyman laborer in addition to a farmhand. His sobriquet has a bit of a “hobo culture” feel to it.

And it’s true, a brawl-happy farmhand named Tornado Tom seems to stumble right out of a Jim Tully book. But lest you start to think of Tom as a Steinbeck-ian hero, let’s rattle off the fella’s opponents across five adventures: He begins by breaking up a crooked milk monopoly run by a racketeer in a small city. Hooray for Tom.

Next up, he smashes a labor march. Tom, oh no. He busts that union so darn well that the FBI comes calling, and pretty soon Tom is routing a cell of foreign bolsheviks. To be fair, they were trying to drain him of his blood, which is revealed to have amazing restorative powers. So even I will say that, yes, the foreign bolshevik vampires need a seeing-to.

Tom doing what he does best — losing his temper and hurting a bunch of people in the process.

What precisely in a hurricane gives a man restorative blood, I couldn’t tell you -- perhaps it was like being in a big centrifuge. You’d have to ask a scientist.

But that question is left unanswered, alongside the provenance of Tom’s amazing abilities. At some point, spurred on by some unknowable instinct, Tom feebly calls upon Boreas, “God of Wind,” to save him during a badly mismatched fight. That apparently works, which implies that there’s more to Tom than a cyclone and a hard-on for capital-a Authority.

Unfortunately we’re denied these answers and others as Tom sputters out after five adventures. A subsequently-promised epic adventure -- “Tornado Tom Saves America!” -- never materialized. For all we know, Tom had a mother -- and she’s still waiting for him at home.

The hell he does.

* * *

Thanks to the Digital Comics Museum for scanning, uploading and making available these comics. Please visit and support Digital Comics Museum.

Truly Gone & Forgotten : BANSHEE O'BRIEN (And Tommy)

2025-07-31T06:00:00.000-07:00

Banshee O’Brien, Boy Enchanter
Creator uncredited
Appears in All-Hero Comics vol.1 No.1 and Whiz Comics vol.1 No.46

Meet the hepcat Harry Potter.

In its day, Fawcett Comics was home to its fair share of magical superheroes - wizards and sorcerers who took to crimefighting with, often, little more than a snazzy suit and a magical accoutrement to their credit. These kinds of magicians were fairly common in comics as a rule, and Fawcett’s percentage of the population included the “Master of Magic” El Carim, the dapper Diamond Jack and his omnipotent tie-pin, Merlin’s direct descendant Balbo the Boy Magician, and Warlock the Wizard (armed with a life-size golden fist of magic) – even the high-flying Marvel Family owed its powers to the wizard Shazam!

Chief among Fawcett’s semi-divine do-gooders – and the only member of this stylish set to star in his own book, as well as a lengthy run in Fawcett’s flagship title Whiz Comics – was Ibis the Invincible! Ancient adventurer Ibis is revived in the modern day alongside the equally eternal princess Taia, who acts as his partner-in-peril. The pair are committed to battling black magic in all of its forms, aided by Ibis’ incredible Ibistick, which can make even the most unlikely of the wondrous wizard’s wishes and commands come true!

With all of this power and authority behind Ibis, it comes as something of a surprise when he finds himself completely overpowered by a menace of the modern age – and gets shown up by a pint-size spellcaster!

She brushes her hair with a real je ne sais quoi…

Confronted by a hideous hydra in All-Hero Comics vol.1 No.1 (March, 1943), Ibis finds that his wondrous weapon is powerless against the beast and its ability to induce madness upon those who set eyes upon it!

Faced with a flaccid Ibistick, the ancient wizard does what many older men do when their magic wands stop working — he puts the blame on modern society!

Rationalizing that his Ibistick is only effective against the evils of the ancient world, Ibis intuits that the hydra has sprouted from some sort of modern-day malaise. “The hydra is a thing newly born of the foulness and disease of modern great cities!” he announces, as though reading aloud from a typical Facebook account, “It feeds on the good in men’s souls … leaving only madness behind!”

Luckily for Ibis and the rest of town, salvation arrives wearing short-pants. Slipping past the police barrier is Banshee O’Brien, an adolescent Irish-immigrant enchanter with a Bowery Boy accent. “So you’re the hydra thing them papers was writing about,” he mouths off to the monster’s face, before scattering the monster with a shout of “You’re gonna regret this, pal … Abracadabra! Shomanx! Seethodargox! Heptomangox!”

Awwww Suffragette!

A modern-day magician is exactly the advantage which Ibis is seeking, and Banshee is just the boy for the job! Excited at the opportunity to apprentice for the ancient Egyptian wizard, Banshee rattles off his own origin for Ibis and Taia’s benefit:

While relaxing at the beach, some five years previous, Banshee sees a troubled sailboat in the water. The ambitious eight year-old swims the remarkable distance to the tattered tub only to discover a middle-eastern mystic chained to the mast and dying of dehydration.

Although Banshee is able to steer the ship to shore, the strange visitor succumbs to what he describes as 180 days adrift at sea, the punishment of a jealous caliph. Before mortally expiring, however, he passes on a powerful symbol of gratitude to the young O’Brien. “Many moons ago,” he explains with his dying breaths, “I made a pact with the New Gods who taught me the New Magic!” Recovering a bound text from his robes, he adds “I give you the secrets of the new magic! You shall inherit them!” and then presumably perishes, off-panel.

That’s a terrible thing to have happen in the
middle of a fella’s extra-special.

Banshee is one of those rare characters in comics who comes armed with a double-barreled origin. In addition to his singular experience at the beach, it seems that Banshee himself also derives from a magical lineage. When the young O’Brien returns home from the shore to inform his aged mother of the day’s exciting new developments, she responds approvingly. “It’s right and fittin,” she chirps over a busy stewpot, “Ye’re descended from a long line of Irish mystics … hence your name!” That explanation may not quite line up, but it does go to show how moms are often ahead of the curve.

Later orphaned (off-panel, by unexplained circumstances), the ambitious adolescent opens a storefront sorcery shop as a “High Class Magician and Seer.” His operation largely consists of fixing sandlot baseball games and providing homework assistance with the aid of a crystal ball. It’s not elegant (or even ethical) but, as the young fellow himself finds an occasion to say: “A guy’s gotta live!”

Under Ibis’ guidance, the pint-size swami manages to put an end to the menace of the hideous hydra. Realizing that the burrowing beast is a creature of darkness, Banshee encourages Ibis to command the sun to rise several hours early, baffling day workers but also burning the hydra to ash. “Destroyed as the cleansing light of the good sun will destroy all evils of the world in time” announces Ibis, spuriously, and unconcerned with whatever cosmological chaos he has just unleashed. More to the point, however, Ibis and Banshee decide at this occasion to form a partnership, appearing again in Whiz Comics vol.1 No.46 (September, 1943) as Magic, Inc, whose first (and only) mission involves upending a spree of rampaging leprechauns, and concludes with Banshee in a dress.

BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE!

Tommy
Created by Bill Parker and Gus Ricca
Appears in Whiz Comics vol.1 No.7-11, 13, 16-18, 31

Banshee wasn’t the only orphaned boy taken on as a ward by Ibis and Taia, nor even the first!

That honor goes to Tommy (no last name), who first appeared in Whiz Comics vol.1 No.7 (August, 1940) and went on to appear another handful of times in subsequent issues. Unlike O’Brien, Tommy was the more conventional boy sidekick whose main contribution to the plot involved succumbing to the kind of menace that Ibis could heroically fix.

He is pretty mouthy.

In fact, Ibis and Taia first encounter Tommy at a roadside carnival, where the young man has taken unadvisable employment as the terrified target of a drunken knife thrower!

Liberating the boy from his unhappy occupation, Ibis and Taia take him to Hollywood, where he ends up taken hostage by a power-hungry studio head who longs for the Ibistick itself. After that, Tommy is shuffled off to military school, which I’ve personally never taken as a good sign.

Even then, he still manages to find himself in frequent peril. At one point, he is tricked into believing that Ibis’ nemesis Trug is his true father, and on another occasion is turned into a tree.

Banshee has not popped his head above ground since DC acquired the Fawcett line of characters, regardless of the fully-coincidental but tempting reference to “New Gods” in the kid conjurer’s origin. Tommy has no such open invitation, but that’s probably for the best, the poor kid. He’d probably just get turned into a tree again.

Thanks to the Digital Comics Museum for scanning, uploading and making available these comics. Please visit and support Digital Comics Museum.

Truly Gone&Forgotten : Blackout!

2025-07-29T06:00:00.000-07:00

This may be the wrong time in history to focus on a superhero who’s blacked-up from head to toe but, what the hell, let’s roll the dice.

Blackout
Created by Don Rico
Appears in Captain Battle Comics #1 (1941 - reprinted in #5)

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a mid-air collision?

Nope, it’s just a massive cloud of choking black smoke! And, in the center of that cloud -- a naked man, in a domino mask, blacked up from head to toe, and flying as though he had been shot from a cannon! Fascism, beware -- here comes the avenging hero BLACKOUT, Democracy’s dingiest defender!

“AND THROUGH THE WILL OF A MILLION SOULS, BLACKOUT IS BORN!”

Working feverishly by lamplight, passionate young surgeon Dr.Basil Brusiloff struggles to save lives while Nazi airplanes riddle Belgrade with bombs. “Why?” he cries, as he collects vital medical supplies from his besieged laboratory, “What have we done to be attacked so brutally?” he demands of no one, bellowing into the empty air “...mangled women … men screaming in dying agony! WHY?”

No sooner has he posed the ghastly question than a Nazi bomber answers it, definitively in the negative, by delivering a “cargo of death” directly on the roof of the hospital. Explosions rip through the building, reducing the structure to rubble!

Tragedy following tragedy

In his lab, however, Brusiloff discovers new life and new power. By some radical combination of chance, the racks of chemicals and medicines surrounding the young doctor are activated by the explosion, forming strange new concoctions and granting amazing abilities. Swallowed by a choking cloud of angry black smoke, Brusiloff emerges, bursting with strength, his body enveloped in an eerie new substance.

The resulting aesthetic implied to some readers that Blackout was covered in thick, shaggy fur, like a werewolf. This is, of course, absurd. Blackout was, much more reasonably, a naked man whose pores exuded oily threads of greasy black smoke. Cool.

It’s the best education
a slob could hope for.

It can’t be denied that Blackout has a knockout look. The roiling clouds of inky blackness are highly dramatic, the tri-color blue-black-green palette is pretty unique in comics, and what can you say about a man who tops that ensemble with a grass green domino mask.

Naturally, if you’re Blackout, you’ll want to wear a disguise. You wouldn’t want anyone from work to recognize you, after all, during those times when you’re a fascist-smashing smoke man. It would be terribly awkward. This is the same reason that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles wear masks, in case they meet Shredder at the supermarket, or church.

Besides power and a dramatic new look, Brusiloff gains a mission. While the basis of his origin was chemical and catastrophic, something supernatural seems to speak to the strange new figure which looks back from the former young surgeon’s mirror. “What has caused this to me, I do not care! All that I know is, I feel the mighty command of a million souls who have perished from oppression in the struggle to keep democracy alive, appealing to me to carry on their ideals!”

In service of those ideals, Basil gains powers -- largely the product of the black tendrils of smoke which coil around him! He proves capable of flying by blasting out jets of smoke, can form choking and blinding cloud covers, knock planes and missiles out of the air, and even generate the force sufficient to blow brick walls to pieces.

Better yet, in twelve hours he masters these powers, and demonstrates as much by smashing the very planes which destroyed his hospital! PAYBACK.

Blackout slaughtering Nazis and still having time to instigate a rebellion.
This is the product of the kind of time-organization skills you develop in medical school.

In the remainder of his sole adventure, Blackout pursues the planes to the headquarters of the Nazis who ordered the attack. Here he uncovers a ‘forced labor factory’ (and, let’s be honest folks --- aren’t they all?) and the architect of all this misery, Heinrich Himmel (no relation). Having fomented a rebellion among the enslaved workers, Blackout demolishes the factory and many of the enemy’s weapons, leaving only tanks. For these, he provides a massive tunnel of smoke through which the escaped prisoners drive until reaching a friendly nation. This underlines the importance of infrastructure.

“WE DEMAND PEACE, BREAD AND FREEDOM!”

One interesting element of Blackout is that he’s a member of comics’ Axis-smashing fraternity of Golden Age heroes -- with a noticeable difference. Most anti-fascist superheroes of the era were, first and foremost, patriots. There were dozens upon dozens of flag-draped superheroes in the comics pages, and they primarily boasted bold red, white and blue palettes, adorned with eagles, stars, bars and any other unambiguous indication of their allegiance. As a handy example -- Captain Battle, in whose eponymous title Blackout debuts, combines many of these decorations and throws in an eyepatch, for clout.

By contrast, Blackout cuts a completely different figure -- a stark body of writhing black smoke. Nevermind patriotic trappings -- Blackout is barely visible as a figure, with ropey bands of impenetrable cloud giving his entire body the illusion of being wrapped in thick black fur. The only splash of color in the whole setup is Blackout’s green domino mask, which undoubtedly served the actual purpose of distinguishing the hero from any random silhouette elsewhere in the story.

I’m with these guys.

Nonetheless, Blackout’s mission is overtly -- and deliberately -- antifascist, and against “the makers of war.” He is described in the text only as a “friend of the oppressed,” but the atypically literate strip drops strong hints that Blackout does have philosophical allegiances: Specifically, that he’s a Communist-leaning antifascist. If he isn’t the only such superhero in America’s Golden Age of Comics, then he’s at least unique enough to mention.

Additionally, it’s worth wondering how many other comic book heroes of the age would begin their adventure with an anti-war quote from British satirist and liberal socialist Douglas Jerrold. “War is but murder in uniform (1909)” are the words which greet the young readers of Blackout’s adventure in two-fisted Captain Battle Comics, a book otherwise dedicated to colorful depictions of battlefield victory and death. What a conflicting preamble! Nonetheless...

“AS I HAVE BLACKED OUT THESE ENEMIES OF LIBERTY … SO SHALL I DO TO ALL WHO’D CAUSE OPPRESSION TO REIGN…”

Blackout was the creation of Don Rico, who may be primarily known as co-creator of The Black Widow, and also of engagingly atypical features such as The Sorceress of Zoom and Flip Falcon of the Fourth Dimension. He also preceded, as co-creator, Charles Biro’s run on Lev A.Gleason’s Daredevil. He was additionally a prolific paperback writer, so when the Beatles sing that song, now you know who they’re talking about.

Blackout leaves the rescued prisoners inside the borders of a foreign, friendly nation. As they cheer freedom and celebrate their liberator, Blackout promises this wonderful new world. “The authorities here will treat you with respect,” he assures them, “And you will never again be slaves of brutal tyranny!” If that future actually came to pass, it might explain why Blackout petered out at one appearance. Who needs liberator in a world of Peace, Bread and Freedom?

His sole vice: Gambling.

Truly Gone&Forgotten : Moppo the Marionette

2025-07-24T06:00:00.000-07:00

Moppo the Marionette
Created by Frank Borth
Appears in Champ Comics #25 (1943)

Except for a cantankerous attitude, there’s nothing particularly unusual about clown-like marionette Moppo at first sight. He’s not magical, he’s not a scientifically-advanced robot, he wasn’t brought to life by a child’s wish -- As advertised, Moppo is little more than a standard marionette. But when a COP is murdered by a NAZI in front of the toy shoppe window which Moppo inhabits, then Moppo comes to life!

The irascible effigy enjoys only one adventure, but he packs it full of punch. In short order, Moppo liberates himself from his strings, escapes his store, hops on a nearby tomcat pursues the killer on cat-back, cleans house on the entire crew of a Nazi U-Boat (!), and saves important American military plans from sinister Axis possession. Not bad for a Muppet!

Moppo’s machinations are grim and inevitable.

Naturally, he performs all of these feats in his own inimitable style. Just in order to accommodate his diminutive stature and lack of firepower, Moppo doesn’t directly attack the U-Boat in question. Instead, he sabotages it here and there -- blacking out the periscope in one instance, and firing the gun on deck to attract an American patrol boat in another.

Then there’s just what we’ll call “The Moppo Way of Doing Things.”

Please stop manhandling the cop’s corpse, Moppo.

The most grim example of which involves Moppo peeling open the eyelid of the recently-murdered cop, peering at the unresponsive orb and declaring “Hey, this fella’s DEAD!’ as he effectively desecrates the corpse. Moppo is also given to unique exclamations -- Lawzy Days, Hotchapeedy and Zoodu -- which may as well constitute a unique language.

Moppo creator Frank Borth was best known for creating socialite Dianne Grayton — a.k.a The Spider Widow, a crimefighting debutante who was romantically involved with another costumed crimefighter, The Raven. When Borth later took over the Phantom Lady feature in Police Comics, the trio would make guest appearances in each others’ titles. This eventually grew into comics’ first (and possibly only) cross-title superheroic romantic triangle of the Golden Age. Personally, I just think of them as comics’ first Throuple.

Wrapping up his adventure, Moppo returns to his toy shoppe window and collapses -- luckily reattached to his strings -- under the sign which advertises his sale price (a whopping $25.00 -- that’s $450.00 in contemporary dollars!).

“Hey kids!” shouts an unknown young passerby, a blonde boy pointing at Moppo through the glass, “Lookit Moppo,” he adds, “He looks tired. He looks like he’s been somewhere.” However short-lived his crimefighting career, it’s clear that the neighborhood children are really in tune with the moods of Moppo.

Kid, you’re playing with fire.

Thanks to the Digital Comics Museum for scanning, uploading and making available these comics. Please visit and support Digital Comics Museum.

Truly Gone&Forgotten : The Buzzard

2025-07-22T06:00:00.000-07:00

The Buzzard
Created by Martin Filchock
Appears in Wham Comics #2 (December 1940)

Who is … The Buzzard?

Well, according to his introduction in the pages of Wham Comics No.2 (Dec 1940), he is “The nemisis [sic] of the underworld,” and the enemy of the “snakes, rats and vermine [sic] who prey upon … good people!”

Who is the Buzzard? Someone who’s too busy fighting crime to proofread a comic script is who!

But who is behind the bespectacled crimefighter whose modest frame belies tremendous strength and athleticism? It’s actually a complicated question!

And he’s perceptive, too.

The Buzzard’s true face is never shown, and his diminutive build is owed to an hallucinatory gas -- one of several gadgets composing the Buzzard’s bizarre arsenal of justice. In reality, anyone could be this man who appears as nothing more than a four-eyed, beak-nosed scarecrow, trotting around in an almost comically loose-fitting tuxedo.

An essential three-panel prologue explains that the role of the Buzzard has been adopted by others in the past, and that only three people in the world are aware of the current hero’s actual name and identity!

It’s strongly implied that one of these three is “Flash,” a broad-shouldered and tow-headed college athlete who certainly seems to have the physicality for the job. Additionally, as far as the Golden Age of Comics goes, he has one of the best possible motivations to suit up against crime -- he played varsity football. Go get ‘em, tiger!

It’s worth asking about his on-field performance, however, since Flash seems to be -- intentionally or not -- a stupid klutz. This is only one of the reasons that his father, the Chief of Police, discourages Flash from hanging around the police station. In addition, he’s just plain afraid that being a cop would be too dangerous for his dimwitted boy!

But it’s also just as likely that the Buzzard could be -- the Mayor!

After all, it’s the Mayor who explains how the Buzzard’s powers and weapons work, who hands down the equipment to the new Buzzard, and who not only claims to have invented them, but seems to be in charge of the whole arrangement.

He even exhibits the feature of the hallucinatory gas at one point, transforming himself from roly-poly to willow-thin. Even though the prologue is titled “How the Buzzard Came to Be,” the Mayor makes it clear that the vigilante is already established in the city and his tools have been previously employed…

The Chief, the newspaper reporter, some cops, the Mayor’s Niece and Flash — every one of ‘em, The Buzzard.

He left the stove n.

And then there’s The Mayor’s Niece, a quick-witted and resourceful young woman who has been cleverly named “The Mayor’s Niece.” Not only is she one of the three alleged people who know The Buzzard’s identity, she’s also quick to throw the cops off the trail when they get too close to the hero!

If that weren’t enough, there are also competing clues to the Buzzard's alter-ego. Hanging around the station, for instance, is an unnamed newspaper reporter whose build and hair match the unseen figure from the prologue! Likewise, Flash went jacketless through the majority of the story, but the figure who was shown in the prologue is sporting a blue jacket -- like any number of police officers might be wearing around the station!

Regardless of who happens to be portraying the gaunt-cheeked do-gooder, they’re quickly given an opportunity to show off with their fancy new weapons.

In this instance, at the very least, that includes a pocket-sized ray-gun which melts concrete, a pair of vicious claw-tipped gloves, and the uncanny ability to cast a shadow in the silhouette of a laughing buzzard!

These are employed to rout a crook named Killer Pocci and his mob of henchmen from their refuge in a towering building, where they’ve retreated with $100,000 in stolen ash! The Buzzard ably fights his way up stairwells and elevator shafts in a sort-of reverse Die Hard, ploughing through a dozen tough guys before obligingly kicking the chief baddie through the window on his way out. Whoever’s behind the disguise sure can fight!

With all the potential suspects gathered at the site of the shoot-out, it’s impossible to say which one wielded the identity of The Buzzard. After one appearance, it’s a mystery that may never be solved...

Damn that caption got excited.

Truly Gone & Forgotten : Margo the Magician

2025-07-17T06:00:00.000-07:00

Margo the Magician
Created by Bill Bydem
Appears in Uncle Sam Quarterly #2 (1941)

Naw, c'mon, I want to
see the great magician
make the bottle disappear.

Stepping forth from the veils of mystery and illusion comes MARGO -- a “lovely assistant” to a has-been stage magician who receives a surprise upgrade to “defender of liberty and scourge of empires!”

Wandering occupied China during the height of World War 2 is THE GREAT PRESTO and his youthful assistants, the adolescent Jimmy and no-nonsense Margo -- who are also his kids! Once a great magician performing to the practically-proverbial “crowned heads of Europe,” Presto now accepts pittances to perform for nearly-empty theaters. In his quiet hours, his kids keep an eye on the dissembling mystic. “Dad’s hitting the old bottle again!” Margo has a chance to exclaim early in the story, and probably not for the first time...

There’s no Mrs.Presto in the equation, but that doesn’t mean anything special -- most magicians reproduce asexually. You just do the “sawing a lady in half” trick very very wrong and, voila, you get two kids.

Presto’s subsequent performance in a war-damaged opera house is interrupted halfway through by a desperate pair of Chinese soldiers. Fleeing Imperial Japanese military police, the duo are hidden inside the magician’s cabinet -- an illusion custom-made to make a body disappear! As Japanese soldiers continue to fill and search the theater, the act of life-saving stagecraft seems to pay off! The Chinese audience, naturally, is reluctant to assist an invading army, and neither Presto nor his kids are eager to confess to hiding the runaway soldiers.

In fact, they seem downright opposed to the idea!

But then -- no joke, straight-up finale-of-M*A*S*H style -- some kid in the crowd goes “What has happened to the soldiers that the great magician hid in the box, mama?” and the Japanese soldiers overhear. SHUT THAT CHICKEN UP. CAN’T YOU SHUT THAT STUPID CHICKEN UP??!

An impromptu firing squad is set up to execute the soldiers as well as Jimmy and Margo, as punishment. It is at this exact moment that Presto suddenly remembers that he has Satan’s phone number.

“O, Rulers of Darkness … Never have I called down the vast powers vested in me! I implore you to make this trick work…” he declares, adding silently “Please make this trick work. It will probably be the most decent thing I ever do for my kids.”

Wielding this strange and tremendous power, Presto directs the rifles away from his children and towards himself, dying in a volley of bullets. It’s only because this was a very emotional scene of dramatic sacrifice that you don’t wonder why he didn’t force the rifles to shoot upward, or at the floor, or to not shoot at all. He had a lot of options besides (A) Death. Still, in his final moments, he breathlessly explains the mechanics of his power to his daughter, likely dooming her to death by needless sacrifice at some future date.

Margo has the power of inducing flashbacks.

Awed by her father’s final act of selfless love and the gravity of the tremendous powers with which she has been entrusted, Margo makes a solemn pledge to use her powers nobly, wisely and always for right: “Boy-o-boy am I really going to go to town on this magic business now.” Uh-oh.

Escaping together, the rebel soldiers introduce themselves as “Hi” and “Lo.” Hi was educated at Oxford and Lo bummed around America for a few years, so the pair speak idiomatic English appropriate to their individual ESL programs.

Also joining the cast is newshawk and lothario Chick Benson, whom Jimmy met in prison. Long story.

I feel this way every time I go to the supermarket these days.

Margo’s amazing illusion ability allows her to strike powerful blows for freedom, largely by way of freaking out soldiers so bad.

Her first effort involving her power causes two Japanese soldiers to see a gently-lobbed pebble as an ENORMOUS FUCKOFF BOULDER COMING RIGHT AT US HOLY SHIT OH MY GOD WHAT THE FUCK AHHHHH.

Margo also causes other opponents to believe that their legs are becoming tree trunks, or that their guns are melting. Curiously, Margo never has to communicate the intended effect of her hypnosis -- it simply happens. Either she has a tremendous strength of will or it’s a wild coincidence.

She’s got her priorities straight.

Sabotaging a supply train, Margo and friends liberate its cargo for the benefit of starving farmers and peasants. Unfortunately, with the cliffhanger set to resolve in a non-existent second appearance, the strip’s readers are left to wonder if hypnosis is any good against a sudden barrage of Japanese bombs. Oh well, it was a short but vibrant career!

Truly Gone&Forgotten : BOOM BOOM BRANNIGAN

2025-07-15T06:00:00.000-07:00

Boom Boom Brannigan
Original Creator Unknown / Further Developed by Charles Voight
Appears in Prize Comics vol.1 No.44-No.66

In the canon of American cartoons, Joe Palooka is comics’ preeminent pugilist – he’s the only one with a mountain named after him, anyway.

Prize Comics’ Boom-Boom Brannigan may not have the notoriety, the longevity, the financial success or the cultural reach but, pound-for-pound, I’ll take him over Palooka any day of the week. Got a problem with that? Well come over here and do something about it, ya lousy mug!


Boom Boom making an impetuous pledge to an imaginary woman

“Boom-Boom” Brannigan – He did everything Indiana Jones did, but backwards and in boxing gloves! Professor of Archaeology, world heavyweight boxing champ, crime-buster and, just as a side hustle, an all-around good guy!

The multi-hyphenate heavyweight stands for clean sports, clean living, and backs it up with his two rugged fists through twenty-five baddie-besting adventures in Prize Comics’ masthead title (of the same name)!

Like most boxing characters, Brannigan boasted no special powers – just a keen mind and fit physique.

However, the covers of Prize Comics might have had you thinking otherwise. There, Boom Boom crashes through windows in only his trunks, fearlessly fights off a tiger with chair wielded in gloved mitts, boxes his way through a crowd of zombies and knocks a gangster for a loop while balanced on a tightrope.

What brought Boom Boom to this energetic new way of life? Made aware of a gambling syndicate on the campus where he taught, and positive that “any scientist with a knowledge of math and an adequate physique can defeat the champ,” college professor and former inter-collegiate boxer Dennis Phillip Brannigan talks his way into a match with then-World Heavyweight Champion, the crooked Tiger Tyrone.

During a sparring match, suspicious of Brannigan’s motives, the powerful Tyrone makes short work of the overconfident prof — who gets knocked so hard that he wakes up in Ancient Greece! That’s quite a punch!

…what?

In this distant time and place, beset by bad timing, Brannigan happens to stumble across the mythical Pandora just as she impulsively releases all of the evils known to mankind into the world.

Although he’s helpless to prevent the spread of murder, greed and misery that pour from the notorious box of myth, Boom Boom makes a perhaps-impulsive pledge to Pandora before waking in his own time, flat on the canvas – to commit the rest of his life to battling evil in his own time.

Primarily, this is done through a boxing-specific lens, but a social worker named Pandora Rogers (coincidentally an identical twin to the mythic Pandora) invites the young professor to help with the hard cases on her caseload.

Eventually, Brannigan takes the title from Tiger Tyrone, but only after dispatching a couple of heavies, rescuing Pandora from kidnappers, and exposing the former champ’s role in a match-fixing scandal.

Anyway, all of that Pandora stuff – modern or mythic – is pretty much forgotten when the feature is handed off after a handful of appearances to Charles Voight. A highly-skilled creator who came to comic books in his middle age after a successful turn in the newspaper funny pages and magazine illustration, Voight brought exceptional craftsmanship to the strip. Visually, it exhibited a delicious gestural motion, while the plots grew more sophisticated and the dialogue brighter.

A lot of the latter has to do with Brannigan’s colorful new trainer – the fast-talking “Character” Conklin.

A hustler with a heart of gold, Conklin is described as a “queer Broadway creature Boom Boom saved from the chair,” although we never hear much more about that. He’s given to grandiloquent speech and low-born sentiments, which is, of course, great. “My theory is to make the green stuff fast, then retire to a chicken farm” he barks at Boom Boom in his first appearance, having just been stiffed by his bookie, “Then my feathered friends’ll work for me!”

Character gets rolled by an escort,
costing Brannigan his borrowed cufflinks.

Brannigan’s adventures at this point are largely split between taking on weird opponents in the ring and mopping up cheap crooks on the streets.

He faces off against the fancy feet of Pierre “La Savate” Charpentier, draws the curtain on the mind-reading “Snake” Hippo (a malevolent hypnotist otherwise known as Radar the Great), and narrowly survives a bout with the rampaging Urko the Afhanafhian Terror – actually a shaved gorilla!

There are evil eyes, freeze rays, ancient spirits, and phrenology, not to mention a deceitful dwarf slugging his way through a tournament for toddlers! Between these in-ring opponents and the usual assortment of racketeers and jewel thieves, by gosh, Boom Boom’s got a full plate!

Outside of his odder adventures, Brannigan also had opportunities to solve some basic murders, rescue an imperiled princess, recover a few stolen jewels and keep his pal Character safe from matrimony. Standard work for any Professor of Archaeology or World Heavyweight Champion, really.

Voight’s untimely death in 1947 coincided with the transition of Prize Comics into a Western title, which rang the bell on Boom Boom Brannigan. Had Voight continued, the feature might have survived in the post-superhero era that signaled the end of the Golden Age of Comics. Given time, it might’ve even stuck around long enough to challenge the uncontested champ, Joe Palooka. Or at least Curly Kayoe.

My readers talking about me.

Truly Gone&Forgotten : Honey Blake, aka THE BLONDE BOMBER!

2025-07-10T11:00:00.000-07:00

She’s facing the wrong way.

The Blonde Bomber
Created by Barbara Hall
Appears in All-New Comics Nos.6-7 and 9; Green Hornet Comics Nos.7-10, 20-28, 32-34; Speed Comics 43-44 (Jun 1942-January 1947)

Stay tuned…

Lights, camera – and loads of action! That’s the motto of the Blonde Bomber — aka tough-as-nails newsreel reporter Honey Blake! Accompanied by daring-but-doughy cameraman Jimmy F. Slapso (The “F,” he insists, stands for “Flash!”), Honey trades blistering banter with the bad guys as she up-ends Nazi schemes and murder plots from coast-to-coast – with the camera always running!

One of many features to be handed off to multiple creators over the course of her publishing history – including to Bob Powell and Jill Elgin, among a mystery roster of uncredited others – the specifics of Honey’s world and personality change depending on who handles the pen. Her creator, Barbara Hall, describes her in her first adventure in this fashion:

“Honey Blake, ace newsreel camerawoman, combines glamorous and daring – daily risking her life to do her job, she matches wits with international criminals to bring you the news! Honey’s character has many facets – in her laboratory she is an expert chemist!”

An interesting gimmick in the first few adventures involved Slapso and Honey digging into their newsreel back-catalog for material, rattling off a list of titles of their upcoming adventures –The Magu Diamond Mystery, The Hollywood Hellcat and The Flaming Flamingo! – which were then featured in subsequent issues.

Once those inaugural stories are out of the way, Honey’s chemistry degree – which was never really exhibited in any meaningful fashion – more-or-less vanishes from canon. Naturally, this does nothing to slow her crusade against wartime crime and international fascism!

An occasional slathering of sauciness was also part of Honey’s repetoire.

Multiple Nazi villains and their sympathizers made up Honey’s rogues gallery, including the villainous, hair-pulling Frau Doktor, the sabotaging tailor “Little Adolf” Pfulglegruber, and deviously redoubtable Nazi prisoner-of-war Field Marshall Taurus.

Fifth Columnists, like Brazilian nightclub owner Ramon Sinistero, were also a frequent source of trouble, and Honey would occasionally find herself protecting American war assets when U.S. soldiers couldn’t – for example, stopping a series of rodent poisonings on the muskrat farm where bombers’ jacket linings was harvested! Later, she also brought to justice a gang of Nazi saboteurs who were injecting commisariat-bound canned salmon with botulism. Listen folks, every little bit helps!

Following the war, Honey and Slapso had to go far afield to find exciting newsreel material. One such excursion lands them in the Yucatan and the company of mellow Mayan sorcerer Umbriago, who becomes a valuable third member of the team. Umbriago reveals to his new friends a magical pool, which allows those who drink from it to visit any era of the past! This lands the trio in the middle of the Mayan empire during the invasion of Cortez, and later in the midst of the American War of Independence – with Slapso’s camera running the whole time.

Umbriago hauling ass.

Newsreels lost their popularity following the war, although that probably had less to do with abbreviating this interesting new twist on the Blonde Bomber’s formula than the general decline in comics’ popularity around the same time...

Truly Gone&Forgotten: SOCK JONES

2025-07-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

Sock Jones and crew kibitzing under the sea

Sock Jones
Created by Jim Lawrence and Frank Borth
Appears in Treasure Chest vol 24 No.1 through vol 26 No.5 (Sep 1968 - Feb 1971)

Bring up the topic of Christian comic books in the U.S. and two culprits are inevitably invoked: There’s the rheumy-eyed, manic evangelism of Jack Chick’s notorious tracts, and the eerily wholesome adaptations which make up the Spire Comics catalog (including many unsettling Archie outings and, of course, Hansi, The Girl Who Loved The Swastika).

I wonder why they call him Zork.

There’s more of a middle ground to be had, however, in a much more traditional type of comic -- Treasure Chest. Also known as Treasure Chest of Fun and Fact (my two favorite things!), the book was made available exclusively -- in bulk -- to American Catholic parochial schools for more than twenty years through the Fifties and Sixties. The action/education anthology boasted a stellar lineup of classic talent, providing an array of content from adventure and humor to school content and games. This formula worked on Treasure Chest’s captive audience of middle-schoolers for a stunning 500+ issues over a 26 year run, yet not even its most popular features move the needle much in terms of modern-day recognition.

Outside of Reed Crandall’s This Godless Communism -- an often-referenced propaganda serial which ran in alternate issues in 1961 -- most of Treasure Chest’s features have faded into virtual obscurity. Among these are the long-running Chuck White and His Friends, The Champ by former Quality creator Frank Borth (Spider-Widow, Moppo The Marionette), and Treasure Chest’s “Boy Wonder of the Scientific World,” Socrates Jones...

“Sure, I know, the whiz-kid inventor. You’re expected in Room 507.”

Adolescent big-brain Socrates “Sock” Jones has the run of the sprawling laboratories of Futuronics, a north-eastern research facility which is home to the boy genius’ many inventions. Chief among these are two: the SEA ROVER, a fantastic undersea exploration vessel which provides transport for Sock and his friends on the submarine portions of his adventures -- and then also ZORK, a comical robot sidekick who’s part Swiss Army Knife and comes complete with a hi-tech bowler derby.

Probably a plastic hassle.

Helping him manage these and other experiments is Dr.Griff Godwin, a scientist at Futuronics and associate of Sock’s father Dr.Jeremy Jones (who is incommunicado en route to Mars for much of the series’ run). Rounding out the cast is clever, unflappable Pippa Parker -- Sock’s cousin, who makes every school vacation an excuse to embark on adventure.

Pippa and Griff represent part of the continuity of Treasure Chest’s ideological outlook -- specifically, its storied progressivism. It may not seem much by modern standards, but the title had long portrayed interracial friendships and racial equality in its stories, even as these innocuous topics were verboten among comics’ mainstream publishers.

As the culture had begun catching up in 1968, Treasure Chest continued to avoid still-present stereotypes -- establishing both Pippa and Griff, for instance, as equal to Sock in courage, determination, and certain types of smarts (Sock *is* a genius, after all, and it is his name on the masthead). It’s a low standard to pass, but many other comics companies at the time had failed to even attempt it.

The comic relief of the strip comes from the aforementioned Zork, of course. The bumbling ‘bot is outfitted for practically any hazardous situation, whether the danger requires dense unbreakable skin, the power of flight, or an unsettling extension of its hose-like proboscis. Ostensibly something like a butler-bot, Zork is setting tables and cooking dinner when he’s not blocking bombs from killing the rest of the team. He’s also reliable for serving a little sass to deserving cranks, which the other heroes seem a little too polite to pull off.

Readers who are introduced to Treasure Chest as a religious comic may find themselves surprised by the lack of religion evident in Sock’s adventures. Treasure Chest ran regular ecclesiastical features in every issue, which freed up its other features to explore their own genres. When mention of faith does occur in Sock’s adventures, it’s organic and relevant to the moment -- Sock prays quietly while struggling with a life-or-death engineering issue, for instance. With potential didacticism dealt with, Sock Jones was free to indulge its intended genre -- which, you might notice, is mystery ...

Aw geez, no.

Beginning in The Deep-Six Mystery, Sock and pals find themselves in all sorts of intrigue and danger in the six-page installments of a protracted run. Written for younger readers, the strip delivered school-age science-hero with a mix of slapstick humor, exotic locations, adventure, occasional comeuppance, and action -- all punctuated by a regularly-scheduled cliffhanger that came along often enough to keep boredom at bay.

Pictured above: Sock busting his robot’s chops
for having gained sentience.

This first adventure pits Sock and crew against V.I.P.E.R., an ocean-based agency of evil whose acronym unrolls to read Velvet International Piracy and Espionage Ring. “Velvet,” in this situation, is either a promise of smooth silkiness or the result of a company called Velvet International Piracy merging with the Viper Espionage Agency. Whatever the case, the story follows former German U-Boat creeps seeking a lost “million in gold and jewels,” and is filled with the type of boys’ adventure which involves finding clues carved into knick-knacks and having to fight robot octopus-shaped submarines.

The following adventure, The Sunken Satellite Mystery, involves the crew seeking a fallen U.S. satellite in the open ocean amidst rumors of a dangerous sea serpent. This introduces another of Sock’s amazing inventions, the SKYMARINE -- a high-tech dirigible that can also travel undersea, and looks like it’s gone slack-jawed when its command module is loosed.

Other amazing Sock inventions aided their investigations in land, sea and air. Sock also possessed a slim-profiled SOCKOPTER, which is pretty much what it sounds like, and access to the amazing properties of AQUAFLECTION, an ambiguous technology which protected ship and diver against the immense pressures of the deep.

His most amazing invention came in the form of LUXITE, a material which absorbed light and ejected it out the other side. Its obvious potential for space travel leads to The Time-Dust Mystery, a chapter which both reunites Sock with his long-absent father, and expands the potential of the Sock Jones universe by introducing alien empires and time travel to the mix.

Ultimately, Sock goes out a little like the Scooby-Doo gang, hunting down a ghost town’s missing treasure while avoiding a mad scientist’s tornado-making machine in The Tornado Treasure Mystery.

Treasure Chest shutters operations shortly afterward, putting a kibosh on any further mysteries and the entirety of the line’s many long-running features.

Sock Jones and crew uncovering Encyclopedia Brown clues...

Truly Gone&Forgotten : Charles Voight's Atomic Man

2025-07-03T06:00:00.000-07:00

Veteran cartoonist Charles Voight only ever tried his hand at one strait-laced superhero. The result was simultaneously thoughtful and absurd...

Well, they say that you only have one chance to make a first impression, you may as well put all your cards on the table.

ATOMIC MAN
Created by Charles Voight
Appears in Headline Comics (Prize) Nos.16-21 (1945-1946)

When Charles Voight launched his career in comic books in 1945, he was already a successful strip artist, comfortably in his middle age. Meanwhile, superheroes -- who still dominated the medium -- were effectively still in their collective adolescence.

With the genre having only debuted in 1938, still-young superhero comics were assembling an identity through bulk quantity. So many superheroes were created and discarded in those scant seven years that much of the genre’s foundation was pretty well established in its early days.

In your average superhero at this point, for instance, there were certain must-haves: a momentous origin, infused with melodramatic significance. Impossible abilities, a noble mission. Then, you can scatter in a secret identity, a goofy sidekick, a girlfriend to sass you and to get threatened by masked weirdos -- and maybe a cool fast car that goes underwater and murders crooks! Also, for some reason, the rules state that many of them should dress in some lamentable suit made of carpet remnants and codpieces. Stay tuned.

An example of more-typical Voight fare in the pages of Prize Comics…

Well into his fifties, Voight had recently closed the curtain on his long-running newspaper strip, Betty, a Gilded Age remnant which had survived the Depression but translated poorly to wartime austerity. For an unfortunately-brief period -- Voight passed away at age 59 in 1947 -- he produced material for Bernard Baily on behalf of the incredibly-fake-sounding publisher R.B.Leffingwell & Co. I challenge you to picture one Mister R.B.Leffingwell and not fundamentally include a ridiculous mustache. Try it. Can’t be done.

The bulk of Voight’s comic catalog was focused on the adventures of archaeologist/boxer “Boom Boom” Brannigan and slang-slinging damsels-and-dragons comedy, Sir Prize (This was a bit of a play on the name of the publisher imprint - Prize - which was very likely chosen to avoid the mouth-filling R.B.Leffingwell & Co. Comics! … PRESENTS!). As far as superheroes went, Voight observed the maturing medium of comics and their precocious paladins of power -- and found them silly.

Voight’s efforts to indulge the need for a superhero-or-two in Prize’s assorted titles were beautifully illustrated and breezily written, but they didn’t approach the subject matter with tongue fully absent from cheek.

Masculine monikers may have lent an air of superheroic gravitas to Voight creations like He-Man and Impossible Man, yet still-superheroic but less lantern-jawed inventions like Jeep & Peep or Captain Milksop sort-of give the game away.

His one straightforward attempt, by contrast, is the bluntly-appellated Atomic Man, debuting in Prize’s Headline Comics vol.1 No.18.

“Indestructible?! That’s a laugh! Another miraculous escape from death -- So I can die six months from now!”

Laboratory assistant Adam Mann just can’t win. Shot fulla holes during his time with the Army Rangers and laid up with a subsequent case of malaria, Adam checks in with his personal physician only to discover that his luck hasn’t changed much. Diagnosed with lymphatic leukemia, he’s given the gloomy forecast of a measly six months to live, assuming that he undertakes extensive treatment. Without that treatment -- six weeks.

Now we have to re-set the “Days Without Somebody Drinking Uranium” sign to zero, again, Adam.

Stunned and distracted, Adam returns to his job at the Atomic Energy Research Lab. This is, by the way, precisely the opposite of the thing I would do if I were given six weeks to live. Returning to my job, sheesh, this guy. Frankly, this is the opposite of what any reasonable human being should do after being handed a virtual death sentence. Even moreso, six weeks isn’t all that long -- a person could sure cause a lot of trouble in that period of time and then escape the subsequent long-term consequences with ease. I understand that the preceding sentence says a lot more about me than it does about Atomic Man.

Luckily, Adam is slightly more responsible (or less opportunistic) than myself. Returning to the office, he’s promptly yelled at by his irascible boss* and, dizzy with shock, retreats into his personal laboratory. Here is a list of what is in Adam Mann’s personal laboratory: (A) An enormously powerful electric dynamo, (B) a shoebox with a loose lid and it’s full of Uranium-235 and, lastly, (C) a refreshing glass of cool water. Just what a recently doomed research scientist needs to clear his head!

*Precisely why he shouldn’ta returned t’the job!

So, yes, the U-235 falls into the glass of water, and he drinks it, and he stumbles backwards into the electric generator.

Adam learns two important facts about his new atomically-acquired situation actuelle: Number one, he is practically indestructible. Number two, the electro-radiation power he’ll soon exhibit resides entirely in the last, inaccessible piece of shrapnel left in his body -- in his right hand. And if he touches anything with that hand or points at something with that hand, then:

Returning from an impromptu followup physical, Adam discovers that he’s been cured of cancer AND is a “human atomic bomb.” That’s a two-fer! He covers his dangerous mitt in a lead glove, like a radioactive Michael Jackson, and muses on what to do with this awesome opportunity. “I could use my power to crush every evil influence in the world!!” he says, alarmingly.

“Allow me to introduce myself -- I’m Atomic Man! I’m going to vaporize you -- unless you surrender!”

With a slow start in his debut appearance, Adam has to make up for lost time. To begin with, in Headline Comics No.17, He acquires his first colorful crook -- “King” Maline, an ambition-obsessed crime-lord looking to conquer America for his personal property, and whose scheme involves abduction of a prominent atomic physicist. Atomic Man also unveils his superheroic nom-du-guerre, exhibits many of his newfound abilities (which have expanded to include flight and built-in radar, which I believe makes him an airplane) and, more importantly, his costume.

I may be overstating my position here, but I don’t believe there’s a costume in the history of comic books that looks more like a guy wearing the contents of a still-life painting. Imagine if you were taking a life-drawing class, and someone stole the model’s clothes when no one was looking. Rather than send that poor bastard into the streets starkers, you grab whatever props you can find on the still-life table. A dusty carpet. A copper mug. A couple of oranges, although I don’t know where he’ll put ‘em. “Here,” you say, dumping wax fruit out of a metal bowl, “This’ll keep the rain off.”

From the perspective of sheer rendering, it’s wonderful. Voight’s exceptionally capable with a loose, gestural line. The folds of the fabric and the musculature of Atomic Man’s largely bare bod are wonderful works of illustration. But honestly. He looks like the FTD flower guy. He looks like he should be installed over an ice-skating rink. He looks cold. Especially his knees.

Speaking of visuals, the manner of Atomic Man’s execution of his opponents --which I mean literally -- is unique. With his hand outstretched, Atomic Man makes short work of King Maline and his crew, dispatching them over the stretch of a page-and-a-half. They vanish in clouds, at the tips of lancing bolts of energy, dying with a sputtering “PHUTT!”

You sure? Better give ‘em another round just to be safe.

Headline Comics No.18 introduces a character who, to judge by the lipstick-painted face of Adam in the final panel, is meant to fill the girlfriend role -- Sally Allen, who debuts by way of barely surviving a fall down an elevator shaft. By this point, though, Voight seems largely done with Atomic Man as a character. His final conflict under his creator’s pen involves a garden variety gang of bank robbers, most of whom Adam chooses to tackle sans phutt. In a move more suitable for Voight’s pugilistic professor “Boom Boom” Brannigan, Adam quips “I didn’t waste my time in the Rangers, Rat!!” as he slugs a crook’s jaw into an elastic shape.

Whether Voight had intended to continue the strip is anyone’s guess, as his untimely passing leaves Atomic Man in diverse hands (including Jerry Robinson and a young Gil Kane). Without Voight’s billowy brushwork and fluid writing, Atomic Man quickly becomes indistinguishable from the other lesser superheroes on the stands, and vanishes after three more issues (without so much as a “phutt!”).

--PHUTT!

It’s apparent that Voight wasn’t comfortable in this world of po-faced punch-em-ups and super-powered palookas, despite having established himself in practically every other genre in the medium. With that in mind, it’s interesting to look at Atomic Man not as what it appears to be -- a naked man with a bedpan hat and who murders people with his radioactive shrapnel hand PS he’s dressed like if a magic carpet were also a male stripper -- but as a meditation on the genre.

Maybe it’s just a really sensitive tree.

The deliberate pacing Voight employs in crafting Atomic Man is genuinely unusual for the period. In order to get right to the bang-pow-zoom, most superheroes of the time were introduced, origin-ed, costumed, and fighting their first bad guy within three pages of their debut appearance.. By contrast, Atomic Man isn’t even called Atomic Man by the end of his origin story.

Voight was a superb cartoonist and, more importantly, a great draftsman. His approach to this new genre wasn’t shy of action and activity, but he took each step in the character’s development with ponderous thoughtfulness. Atomic Man, in many ways, feels like a superhero under glass, being observed by its creator even as it’s being created.

An interesting confluence of this is that new superheroes debuting in the contemporary market will probably experience an arc not unlike Atomic Man’s -- getting their gear and dramatis personae parceled out over the first few appearances. Voight trod that ground some two decades before Stan Lee sicced Spider-Man on the world.

Of course, there was a lot of additional superheroic evolution in the twenty years between between Atomic Man and Spider-Man, with orders of additional complexity introduced to superheroes long after Voight’s phutt-ing hero bowed. That’s why the song doesn’t go “Atomic Man / Atomic Man / Does Whatever At Atom Can / Awww Suffragette!”

Thanks to the Digital Comics Museum and archivists Citaltris, Dave Hayward, Freddy Fly, Henry Peters, Lofty Pilot, Moonled, Ontology, Other Eric, Ranger House, and Yoc for scanning, uploading and making available these comics. Please visit and support Digital Comics Museum.

Truly Gone&Forgotten : Mars Mason of the Interplanetary Mail Service

2025-07-01T06:00:00.000-07:00

Mars Mason (of the Interplanetary Mail Service)
Created by Munson Paddock
Appears in Speed Comics #7-11 (1940)

Neither rain, nor snow, nor gloom of night can stop the mail-carrier from their appointed rounds, according to the unofficial motto of the United States Postal Service. But the perils of parcel delivery among the perniciously populated planets of Earth’s solar system add a whole new Sears catalog of threats and impediments to the mix! When it absolutely has to be there overnight -- and by “there,” you mean “the embattled world of Neptune” -- call on the Interplanetary Mail Service and its top agent, Mars Mason!

An aside during an attack by alien monsters educates the readers as to the postal etiquette of the future.

The stoic Mason is the Interplanetary Mail Service’s premier officer, trusted with not only delivering mail from planet to planet in Earth’s solar system, but also defending precious cargo from alien aggression.

On one occasion, while delivering a formula for a deadly explosive to the planet Mars (no relation), Mason is set upon by Jovian Needlemen and their deposed ruler Killraye, seeking the power to recover the throne. Later, while investigating an undelivered message in Earth’s stratosphere, Mason is trapped on the forest world of Greentrees and set upon by vicious Toughtails -- intent on burying him alive! He’s a key player in the terraforming of Uranus, routs a Soursnout rebellion on Venus, and on two different occasions rescues a long-tressed human beauty from alien menace.

The breathless, dream-like storytelling of Mars Mason and its bold, lithographic line recalls the work of much-lauded outsider cartoonist Fletcher Hanks (“Stardust the Super-Wizard,” “Fantomah”), including the latter artist’s gory evocation of unbowdlerized fairy tales. But the strip’s strength is the bold, aggressive and almost overwhelming brushstroke with which the multitude of alien addresses and its residents are depicted.

Mad, beaked fiends wrap tangled streaks of ink-heavy limbs upon their victims. Ships descend from the skies like black darts. Deadly rays explode in black-bordered lightning bolts which terminate in clouds of broad paranthetical curves as thick as the reader’s thumbnail.

To depict dramatic explosions and spirals of uncontained energy, ink-dipped panels are fractured by jagged hairline bolts of color. The result resembles the fractures of a broken pot repaired with gold.

Geometric, graphical elements compose the backgrounds of dizzying space, and the arcs of spaceships as they travel through. Sound effects are rendered in typographic elegance -- a “BANG” erupts in a hand-drawn approximation of Cooper Black on a background of urgent red, in one early panel.

A rescued prisoner ties her hair around
the broken fin of Mars’ damaged ship,
evoking fairy tale logic in a
science fiction tale.

The palette is relentless. Contrasting colors are slotted next to one another in such a way that some panels vibrate and, on a personal note, I have never seen a comic use as much as what I choose to call “bald-ass Magenta” as this one.

Mars Mason was created by Munson Paddock, a veteran illustrator who -- like Atomic Man’s Charles Voight -- came to comics in his forties, following an extensive career in magazines and newspapers. His previous original creations in this medium (“Mr.Bluff,” “Little Miss Thoughtful,” “Naughty Ned,” and others) were universally short-lived, but he nonetheless brought an uncommonly advanced sensibility and skillset to the earliest days of the Golden Age.

Originally creating pulp-style adventure material for National Allied, he made reluctant pokes at science fiction-style material in order to keep up with the drastically different post-superhero market -- under a variety of names. While the work in Mars Mason is demonstrably Paddock’s, the individual entries are attributed to only a small fraction of Paddock’s multitude of pen names -- Lyle Ford, Glen Ross, and Martin Nye.

(Paddock’s penchant for pen names has also managed to muddy the waters about his credits, to some degree. Having used his paternal grandmother’s maiden name, Cecelia Munson, as a credit earned him the accolade of later being erroneously listed among the luminaries in Trina Robbins’ essential A Century of Women Cartoonists)

Mars Mason in all of his explosive glory.

Mason was armed with a “Dyna-Ray” and a “space gun.” Either was capable of producing whatever effect he intended, from flying to blasting to sending and receiving messages. He also wasn’t alone in his battle against the evil alien residents of his solar system. In his final adventure, he rescues the raven-haired “Air Queen” from the temple of the savage letter-stealing Soursnouts, although their further adventures were never delivered.

Truly Gone&Forgotten : Solarman

2025-06-26T06:00:00.000-07:00

Here, in Quino’s gated community…

Solarman
Created by Frank S.Thomas
Appears in Wham Comics #2 (December 1940)

‘Scuse me, coming through …

Close to the center of the “Great Solar System,” the “moon-ringed” planet of Saturn is practically a utopia. “People live in peace, and crime is unknown” claims the introductory caption, which might explain why the natives of Saturn look on the Earth with such pity.

Quino -- an avuncular, yoda-like figure who is also Saturn’s most accomplished scientist -- states the case to his assistant, Solarman. “There are many unhappy earthlings,” he posits correctly, vaguely addressing his many scientific wonders and adding “We must help them, you and I.”

It’s at this point that Quino’s kindly affect takes a sudden and dire turn: “The planet Earth contains much crime -- much evil,” Quino claims in the shadow of a massive gun, before drifting into a solem reverie. “At times I have been tempted to burn Earth to a crisp with one blast from our Dyno-Ray Gun,” he claims, and then seems to trail off as he reminds himself “But I must not, for there is also much on Earth that is good -- Much!’

At this moment in the story, we know absolutely nothing about Solarman -- who he truly is, what his mighty powers might be and where he acquired them, and so on. But what we can say we know for certain is the stakes. Obviously either the planet Earth is saved by Solarman, or we wait with bated breath for the day Quino has had enough of our shit.

Oh, so it’s like that.

What little we are told about Solarman includes that Solarman’s mission is to “wipe all evil from the Earth,” and that his powers are the product of Saturn’s “advanced knowledge of science.” Solarman prepares to leave Saturn for Earth by way of the Master Vacuum-Ray Projector, a massive cannon which can land Solarman on Earth within five minutes. To reach the mouth of the cannon, Solarman is hoisted by a plank of wood attached to a rope and a mechanical winch.

Saturn’s science might be a little less advanced than advertised.

GODSPEED YOU -- SOLARMAN!!!

Arriving on Earth a scant four-and-a-half minutes later, Solarman turns to his mission -- to capture and bring to justice the gangster Ravoni! But time is not on Solarman’s side. While he perches on the Empire State Building and ponders his next step, he notes that Ravoni is preparing to flee the country, using a false passport! Why this is of any concern to a superhero from space is anyone’s guess. Apparently, Saturn has limited jurisdiction. “We gotta get him before he makes it into New Jersey -- then he’s Mars’ problem!”

Solarman finally has an opportunity to display his amazing powers, revealing -- not much to speak of. Lacking flight, he relies on hopping between rooftops and, devoid of super-senses, he must rely on shaking down Ravoni’s old gang for information on their boss’ whereabouts. Saturnian super-science seems capable of granting Solarman fantastic strength and toughness, but little else -- although that’s enough for Solarman to survive a barrage of bullets and to use an unconscious guard as a club.

“EE-EEE-EGH!!”

The lack of powers results in unintentionally hilarious scenes. Despite proving capable of outracing a bay-skimming airplane, catching a ride and single-handedly tearing his way into the cabin, Solarman must then rely on the cabin crew to provide an escape. Taking his captive crook to the cabin -- in a convincing headlock -- Solarman demands that he be outfitted with a parachute and chucked out over police headquarters!

Solarman returns to Saturn after what might be considered a successful mission, if only to judge by the fact that Quinto didn’t blow the Earth to atoms.

Thomas was a prolific creator for Centaur’s catalog of bizarre superheroes. His creations included Dr.Hypno and -- more famously -- The Eye, a floating eye amidst a blaze of flame and smoke which was seemingly all-powerful and would occasionally direct human agents to go stop crimes. While Solarman wasn’t quite that weird, he was the superior master of branding -- the word “Solarman” appears twenty-one times in the thirty-seven separate panels which constitute the story. It’s not a name you’ll easily forget!

I love how they color the Empire State Building in old comics.

Thanks to the Digital Comics Museum for scanning, uploading and making available these comics. Please visit and support Digital Comics Museum.

SPIDEY DOES DALLAS!

2025-06-24T08:00:00.000-07:00

Usually the dangers in Dallas are related to civil liberties.

Spidey Does Dallas

Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk (1981) in Southwest Showdown

Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk (1982) in Pipeline to Peril

Spider-Man, Firestar and Iceman at the Dallas Ballet Nutcracker (1983)

Spider-Man and the Dallas Cowboys: Danger in Dallas (1983)

Spider-Man : Christmas in Dallas (1983)

Howdy, true believers! It’s time to mosey away from the familiar four-color sights and sounds of Spider-Man’s Manhattan stomping grounds and check out a new friendly neighborhood … down ol’ Dallas way!

Marvel Comics’ licensed books have a notoriety all their own. Some of their most acclaimed titles – G.I.Joe, Transformers and Micronauts, to name a few – came directly out of licensing deals, while some of their most oddball books – U.S.1, Team America and Crystar – were the product of in-house attempts to break the toy market.

And a quintet of books sponsored in part by the Dallas Times Herald and the Sanger-Harris chain of department stores saw Peter Parker and a slew of other Marvel characters temporarily relocating their adventures to the third biggest city in the state of Texas. The early 1980s brought the web-headed wallcrawler, the incredible Hulk, and a handful of colorful villains – plus Spidey’s Amazing Friends – southwesternly for these promotional books.

[The Uncanny X-Men also enjoyed an opportunity to promote the State Fair of Texas in search of a new mutant recruit, read all about it here]

Here’s a fun fact about these comics: Despite having been published cooperatively at the behest of companies other than Marvel, the stories in these comics appear to take place in the “616” continuity of the mainstream Marvel Comics universe! What scholarship there is to explore on the matter suggests that these tales have never been written into obscurity or shunted to a parallel universe. Instead, these Texan trips comprise a little-known side-alley of our hero’s adventures – let’s see where it takes us!

Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk (1981) in Southwest Showdown

The inaugural tale in Spider-Man’s Lone Star State adventures is book-ended with shopping trips to Sanger-Harris, a short-lived concatenation of department stores which folded not long after this issue and, these days, swims somewhere in the genes of Macy’s. The reason for the shopping trips is to procure souvenirs for Aunt May, while the reason for the trip overall was so that Peter could catch up with former classmate “Fran” – now a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader!

“The Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
have stumbled upon our operations!”

It’s difficult to explain how much of a phenomenon the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders were in that brief period of the late Seventies and early Eighties, if you haven’t lived through it. Obviously, the Cheerleaders still exist – as an institution, one might argue –, but they were ubiquitous in this earlier era of the Big 3 broadcast networks. A high-budget, sex-sells overhaul of the traditional cheerleading squad, by 1980 they’d scored a made-for-TV movie, guest-appearances on high-rated TV shows (including, necessarily, The Love Boat but, strangely, not Fantasy Island) and a best-selling poster (which is how society collectively leered before Google). Around the same time, they broke the hallmark of true cultural success: inspiring an infamous porn parody.

So congrats to Fran, canonically a friend of Peter Parker’s who went on to cheer for the Cowboys! Also, she defeated the Leader. Canon.

On their way to perform at a nearby Army base, the Cheerleaders become lost in a torrential downpour. This leads them to an ersatz base set up in the middle of the desert by the Hulk’s brainy foe, The Leader! For several pages, the scantily-clad cadre slowly determines the true nature of the military outpost, and Fran is able to sneak a phone call to Peter which brings Spider-Man to the scene. Around the same time, the Hulk sort-of stumbles into the picture and starts fucking up all the tanks and stuff that are lying around, as he will.

The Cheerleaders, meanwhile, manage to sneakily wrest away control of the Leader’s evil scheme, proving once again that in the war between Good and Evil, cheer wins.

And Peter goes back to doing what he does best — photographing butts.

Spider-Man and the Incredible Hulk (1982) in Pipeline to Peril

Peter Parker finds himself in Dallas again, this time visiting his young cousin “Billy,” and that is canon. I don’t know who Billy Parker or Billy whatever-his-name-is, but he’s Into The Spider-Verse now!

The whole fucking place is paved.

Unfortunately, also visiting Dallas is Not Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, longtime foe of our friendly neighborhood web-slinger. It appears that Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin of New York crime, has his eyes on a disrupted oil market. His villainous plot involves having the Sandman use his sand powers to block working oil pipelines in a move which, today, I think we can all agree “why not, already.” It’s about damn time. Hope he fucks ‘em up good. Go Sandman.

Reuniting with Spider-Man, in this issue, will be the Hulk once again! The American Southwest has always been the Hulk’s locale, but just to ensure that he’s hanging around Dallas, his alter-ego of Bruce Banner has taken a job as a wildcatter in an oil field. This is a great idea for Banner because he must keep his temper in check at all times or risk turning into the Hulk. And if there’s any less-stressful, less-physically and -emotionally demanding occupation than working in an oil field…

He really does.

Sandman uses a handful of green food coloring and his shape-changing powers to imitate the Incredible Hulk, in order to blame the man-monster for the damage to the oil field. He also visits Sanger-Harris and picks up a cowboy hat which, I have to admit, suits him.

Despite canonically becoming more powerful when surrounded by sand, the Sandman is pretty handily dispatched by Spider-Man and a cement truck smack in the middle of the Chihuahuan Desert. The Hulk isn’t actually all that helpful in dispatching the crook – in fact, he basically knocks a donkey pump on its ass and likely screws up oil production in the region for years, more than the Kingpin could’ve ever hoped. The Hulk made Kingpin rich, you heard it here first. Canon.

Well I’m sold — on Sanger-Harris!

GALLERY

A fun feature of these titles were the regional ads inserted in blocks between story pages. The Sanger-Harris books in particular not only added Spider-Woman and some Marvel-style menace to some ads, but were drawn in what one can only call “a fascinatingly disturbed line.” Some of these illustrations -- and I remind you that they're intended to sell children's clothes -- have a genuine sense of menace. Enjoy!

Spider-Man, Firestar and Iceman at the Dallas Ballet Nutcracker (1983)

It's like that Kabuki Star Wars they did a few years ago.

(In my first draft of this article, I called this the first comic book outing of this particular trio. It’s my understanding that this is actually the *second* comic book to feature the “Spider-Friends” from NBC’s Saturday morning “Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends” cartoon, and the first comic to feature them in an original story. If so, that’s neat! And if not — look, I love weird old comics, but this specific fact isn’t so compelling that I actually did a lot of research on it. Maybe it’s right, maybe it’s wrong, let’s spin that wheel)

No way that’s gonna catch on.

Part-time superheroine Anjelica “Firestar” Jones is moving to Dallas, canonically, and is saying goodbye to her Amazing Friend teammates Peter and Bobby by treating them to a performance of The Nutcracker, by the Dallas Ballet. For the record, “Dallas Ballet” is also a pretty good name for a drag performer, so consider that a gift from me to you, if you’re so inclined.

Hassling the company, however, is Daddy Long Legs, a baddie bedecked in tux-and-tails and formerly of Spider-Woman’s gallery of rogues. Having swiped an imperfect growth formula from plus-sized superhero Black Goliath, former ballet dancer Daddy experienced an absurd and alarming growth in his arms and legs, lifting him to fifteen feet high with disproportionate limbs. I don’t know where he got his tux.

Of course he is, Bobby, what choice does he have? Life’s a cosmic joke.

Spider-Man, Iceman and Firestar engage Daddy Long Legs outside of the Fair Park Music Hall. It’s what you can only call “a perfunctory battle,” after which the villain is left perched on a towering ice slide while the superheroic trio pop off to the theater. This seems like poor superhero etiquette. Daddy ought to at least get webbed-up, which is a much more sexual sentence than I intended when I began writing it.

Inside, the trio watch The Nutcracker play out, or so I assume – because I’ve never seen it. Here’s what I pieced together: A malevolent toy wizard foists a living tchotchke on his horny niece and a man with five mice for a head is put out by this, then war, Merry Christmas.

“Unf, he iss so BIG!”

Spider-Man and the Dallas Cowboys: Danger in Dallas (1983)

The Giants take on the Cowboys in a comic book which, I’ll be honest here, I don’t know what else happens. I love weird comics and I’ve spent a surprising amount of money on books some of you wouldn’t step on to snuff out if they caught fire, but this book contains Tom Landry and a bunch of famous Cowboys players and, frankly, I couldn’t find it cheaper than forty bucks. Not many men know their limits, but I know mine is around forty bucks.

What does happen in this issue, however, is that the Circus of Crime busts up an NFL game in order to steal the antigravity invention of Dallas-area inventor Dr.Stanley Mudge. Additionally, I’m led to understand that J.Jonah Jameson is portrayed as enjoying a hot dog in the stands. Canon.

Above, not actually the Spider-Man/Tom Landry crossover in question, but rather the only other comic book appearance of Tom Landry, as far as I know. It’s also prohibitively expensive. I got this image online. If someone buys me a real copy, I promise to put a Spider-Man sticker on it and re-post the result above, for clarity’s sake.

Spider-Man : Christmas in Dallas (1983)

Boy, they sure love shooting guns at prominent figures in Dallas, don’t they?

Lastly, however, Christmas in Dallas follows up directly on the previous Dallas-centric diversion. Antigravity inventor Dr.Stanley Mudge invites J.Jonah Jameson and Peter Parker to return to Texas for the enormous charity ball being run under his supervision. The beneficiary: Orphans. (No orphans were invited to the party, it was all oil billionaires. Canon)

Unfortunately, also on his way to the party is Wilson Fisk, the Kingpin. His goal is to personally kidnap every wealthy donor at the party, and then to ask for a measly ten million dollars total in ransom. It’s a blatant attempt at classic villainy and a big step for a man whose cover is as a ‘humble importer of spices.’ He must have really been feeling the failure of the oil scheme from three issues earlier. Especially since, y’know … it’s canon, now!

Arguably, the Kingpin may have been driven mad by Sandman’s failure to tank the oil business, because his method of entering the party unannounced is as follows:

Daredevil: Born Again (Miller/Mazzuchelli 1986)

Luckily, Spider-Man is on hand to dispose of the Kingpin’s scheme — and possibly the Kingpin himself.

Slipping out of the charity ball, Pete dons his Spidey-gear and comes swinging through the window, to Kingpin’s surprise. Spidey manages, in the spirit of the season, to cap off a quick beating by dropping a titanic rich-person-style Christmas tree on top of New York’s literally-biggest crime boss.

Dr.Mudge himself strikes a critical blow by tossing his anti-gravity device straight into Kingpin’s hands, in which it’s viciously clutched. It seems that Wilson Fisk is the type of guy who gets a lot of people pointing to an imaginary stain on his lapel, and every time he looks down. Spidey adds genuine injury to mere insult by webbing the device to Kingpin’s hands and watching him float away into space forever (canon).

So long, fat-ass.

Ultimately, five trips to the Lone Star State and its broad array of department stores and sand is enough for anyone. Peter and pals return to their normal habitats in New York, seemingly bound by a pact of silence. Meanwhile, these curious and in-canon adventures fade into the background of a universe which seems content to not mess, any further, with Texas.

“…the salesgirl really knew her stuff. And it was a fair price, too!”

Quarter Bin Heroes: Pyramid Comics / Ruck Bud and His Screeching Commandos

2025-06-18T06:00:00.000-07:00

Pyramid Productions
Publisher based in South Bend, Indiana.
1986-1987
15 issues

Titles included the anthologies Barbaric Tales, Dark Visions, and Omnicron:Astonishing Adventures of Other Worlds, the latter of which boasts a cover job by Kevin Nowlan. Future Marvel Comics editor Mark Pannicia provides scripts and script assists on many titles, as well as turning out a promising Dave Stevens-inspired cover for Omnicron’s second issue. Not to be outdone, series illustrator Don Bryan roughly channels Mark Schulz for his book The Adventures of Theown (3 issues). Both artists go so far as to craft signatures which resemble Stevens’ and Schulz’, respectively, which you have to admire.

Gary T.Washington (A Boy and His ‘Bot, NOW Comics, 1986) creates sci-fi adventure series Cyberhawks (2 issues). A planned five-issue series, Damlog, was a brutal science-fiction title which debuted in Barbaric Tales and, unfortunately, taps out after a single issue and a bomb-as-hell cover that ought to be on black velvet.

Additional titles included Dimension Z (2 issues), Ruck Bud and His Screeching Commandos (1 issue) and The World of X-Ray, the cover of which promised readers an unappealing ringside seat to X-Ray’s world of “Drug Addiction - Gang War - Child Abuse” (1 issue).

Spotlight on…

RUCK BUD AND HIS SCREECHING COMMANDOS

Coming soon from Hasbro!

The world of 2525 is a very dangerous place. If you find yourself embroiled in some sort of menace -- say an international nuclear kidnapping plot -- then you’re going to want only one man (and his associate band of screeching commandos) on your side. And that one man (and his band of screeching commandos) just happens to be … Ruck “Bud” Webster and His Screeching Commandos!

You might be inclined to sneer at the theatrical hypermasculinity of Ruck Bud and His Screeching Commandos, but rest assured that nothing is taken too seriously in the pages. Craig Hamilton’s cover sets the tone by recalling Michael Golden’s luscious work on Marvel’s G.I.Joe, only by way of Tom of Finland.

Inside, the Screeching Commandos themselves seem like action figures begging to be made. The roster of this freelance mercenary troubleshooter organization starts with RUCK “BUD” himself. Bud boasts the classic party hair-do, robot enhancements covering the right side of his face, and an aversion to shirts in all forms. At one point, he is described as “half-cyborg” which, I believe, would mean he is ¼ robot. I am not a mathematician. Please direct all further inquiries to CERN.

His cadre of ‘roidal rascals is composed, in part, of mohawked man-mountain BAD BRAD, whose massive size makes up for a limited intellect. There’s also MIKEY JOE, a former con artist named DINO, and PUPPY -- the skinniest of the group and therefore, rightfully, the one on whom they vent all their frustrations. Rounding out the troupe is -- brace yourself, this name is a killing word -- WEASLY BLAST, the most YMCA-lookin’ member of the team. Despite having a name like a really sad grasp at a Harry Potter-themed energy drink, Weasly rocks his baseball cap, Viking braids, and his extremely ride-able mustache so hard that I am sure that he is his own category on PornHub.

“I’ll teach you to use that kung fu bullshit on me!”

Here, our heroes engage in some
phallic antics of public vandalism.

Relaxing between assignments on their personal super-jet, the Screeching Commandos’ hearty games of grab-ass are interrupted by a frantic phone call from the Morrocan head of state, President (?) Guardia (??). It seems that a peaceful moonlight dinner with his daughter Clarissa was cut short … by the infamous Tunisia Defense Army! The hated TDA! They’re not even doing defense right now! They’re just kidnapping Clarissa! Those rotters! Ohhh, how we should all be shaking our fists in the air at this moment.

A compensation of fifty million dollars helps encourage Ruck’s misfit crew into action. They have a super-jet to maintain, after all, and Ruck’s other options are few. Having recently escaped from “Superior Tri-Max Prison,” which sounds like the best value for your dollar when you’re shopping for prisons, Ruck and his crew are eager for action but have obvious issues with legal channels.

I wouldn’t worry about it, kids.
Your troubles are soon about to cease.

Piloting very shirtless and hairy-chested, Ruck lands the crew in Algiers. The Commandos exit the ship en masse but neglect to close the hatch, inviting a couple of street kids to sneak aboard and rip them off. This is a good bit. Later, they’ll discover that the kids cleaned up on beer, comics and stashes of porn. Luckily, the Commandos took all the high-ordinance with them.

The foes faced by the Commandos are varied. First up, Tunisian police officers are given a gentle goodnight by way of Weasly Blast’s sleeping-gas mini-bombs, disguised as studs on his leather wrist-bands -- ALSO a category of its own PornHub -- but the masked ninjas of the TDA get the real business. Lead business. And when it turns out that the TDA is led by Maris Wynd -- the man who cost Ruck Bud his humanity during an earlier battle -- it becomes personal.

It also becomes urgent, as Moroccan President Guardia has used the incursion of Tunisian forces into his nation as an excuse to nuke Algiers! Diplomacy hasn’t improved much in the year 2525, I gather! Also, that’ll put pay to those rotten kids who stole all that crap from the super-jet. Those beer, comics and stashes of porn are in heaven now!

Ruck Bud cathartically defeats Wind, and the Commandos fulfill their potential by destroying a multitude of things and people on the way to rescue Clarissa. The president’s supposed daughter reveals everything -- Clarissa literally explains it all -- informing Ruck and his pals that she is a secret agent and a lookalike for the president’s daughter! Well heck! As they beat feet for the super-jet in hopes of outrunning an incoming nuke, freshly-rescued Agent Marx explains that her employer had been going senile in recent years, which is as good an explanation for this whole story as you really need.

“Check it out, Wynd … there’s a half-cyborg down there.”

♬ He’s kicking some ass — and breaking some glass! ♬ ♬♬ RUCK BUD! ♬ ♬

In Ruck’s world, there are men, and guns, and things like kidnapping and nukes which need men with guns to take care of. Sometimes they have a flying ship. They don’t have women, for the most part. Only two women are mentioned by name in this book, and we only meet one. Of course, she’s a dead ringer for the other, so it’s probably more efficient this way.

But it’s not without humor, and it’s definitely not mean to be taken seriously. The Commados’ battle-cry is, literally, “FISTICUFFS!” Ruck delivers the classic line, early in the story, “I’ll teach you to use that kung-fu bullshit on me,” which you can hear in Kurt Russel’s voice, can’t you?

In the closing pages of the issue, the Commandos don rented tuxedos (for no reason I can discern) in order to beat their payment out of the president of Morocco. I suppose it would be a formal event. In any case, it’s indicative of the dopey and very unserious antics of the cast.

Whatever else, it’ll be fun in a few years when 2525 finally rolls around. Social media will be alight with everyone remarking with some rueful acknowledgement -- gosh, the year of Ruck Bud! Remember when it was so far in the future that it seemed fantastic?

The hint of a promise left unfilled manifests itself in the setting of this future era. The World of X-Ray (which, above, promised drugs and all sorts of other gruesome shit) was also set in 2525, tantalizing the world with a crossover. We’ve been robbed of watching the Screeching Commandos take on child abuse...

♬♬RUCK BUDDD!! ♬♬

Mikros - Titan Microcosmique!

2025-03-13T09:00:00.000-07:00

Mikros

Created by Marcel Navarro (as Malcolm Naughton) and Jean-Yves Mitton (as John Milton)
Appears in Mustang Nos.54-70 and Titans No.35-87 (1980-1986)

You may never have read a single issue featuring the so-called “Microcosmic Titan,” but everything about Mikros is familiar -- and it’s meant to be!

Mikros and friends, encountering a mirror for the first time since they got their costumes.

Mikros and his two equally superheroic allies are frequently found dashing across the Manhattan skyline in their brightly colored costumes, rubbing shoulders with Marvel superheroes (more or less), and even saving the world from destruction -- at least twice!

The bold palette and broad melodrama of the strip meshed perfectly with the bombastic superhero storytelling of Marvel Comics, and the international settings lent the series an unusually sophisticated gravitas.

There was soap opera, cosmic threat, international intrigue, evil societies, and supervillains aplenty! There are tragic sacrifices and soul-searching storylines over almost 80 appearances -- Bronze Age storytelling at its finest!

So, why might you not recognize Mikros and his super-powered pals? Well, for one reason -- they’re very small. For another, Mikros was never a comic which popped up in the American mainstream. It was one of a long lineage of original features created for French publishing house Editions Lug.

Crazy space shit (German translation, Bastei)

At the time, the Lyon-based publisher was responsible for reprinting some of Marvel’s titles in French for the European market. These spanned the gamut of Marvel’s stock, from its major and minor superhero properties (Les Fantastiques and L’Araignee, whose provenance you may be able to suss out regardless of fluency) to popular licenses like Conan, Rom and La Guerre des Etoiles.

(What If--?, the five-hour energy drink of the continuity nerd, was also reprinted in French via Editions Lug, although retitled the somehow more peevish-seeming Et si--? Imagine those words being hissed by a reedy man waving a cigarette around. “Et si--? Et si--? So what if L’Araignee joins Le Fantastiques! Who cares! Et si--?”)

Editions Lug had published original characters prior to their acquisition of the Marvel license, but Mikros represented their first effort to create contemporary super-heroes on a scale to compete with -- or at least seamlessly appear alongside -- the Marvel Universe as represented by the stories within Lug’s purview.

The action sequences scream “American super-hero comics,” the cosmic scale is evidence of a creative team that has gotten the memo, and the heroes are awash in soap opera dynamics and concerns. Co-creator Jean-Yves Mitton and Edition Lug publisher Marcel Navarro went so far as to take on Americanized pen names for the sake of kayfabe.

“C’est moi — Crabb!” (original French publication, Editions Lug)

While neither Mikros nor any of Edition Lug’s other original heroes were officially part of the Marvel universe, sly “cross-overs” took place in the form of familiar merch popping up in-continuity within Mikros’ stories. Early adventures weren’t above having armored superhero Crabb sport a “Spidey” t-shirt in his downtime, or show the team trying to find cover in a costume shop with a pretty specific stock of familiar costumes on display…

Little touches which a reader might identify as being peculiar to European comics will occasionally appear, nonetheless, to dizzying effect. Cosmic and other supernatural effects often seem to have dropped out of Metal Hurlant by way of Kirby and Ditko.

Leaving behind a spaceship headquarters on the peak of the Empire State Building, the trio eventually relocates their operations to Europe, where the more intimate depth of detail in the subsequent settings is palpable.

Who are Mikros and His Amazing Friends?

The villainous, insectoid Svizz descend from deep space to conquer Earth! Their plan involves creating super-powered insect warriors by messing with the DNA of kidnapped humans! The process is interrupted while working on the first three subjects -- Harvard entomologists all, as well as Olympic champions -- giving them each amazing powers to use against the evil insectoid aliens!!

Chief of the three, there’s Mike Ross -- the eponymous MIKROS. A former decathlon champ (and entomologist!), Mike displays tremendous speed and endurance as the superheroic and eponymous Mikros. Also, it was probably pretty easy to come up with a name.

Besides his physical assets, Mike can also change size, fly, use hypnosis rays, shoot or absorb or manipulate energy as needed, and tune his antennae into the existential frequencies of the cosmos, the last part of which sounds fucking radical. Pardon my French.

This seems very French (original French publication, Editions Lug)

Second is Priscilla Conway, aka Saltarella. A former gymnastics champion (and entomologist!), Priscilla walks away from her metamorphosis with powers of flight, super-strength, ray-beams -- the usual good stuff.

Additionally, an important role portrayed by Priscilla throughout the series was that of the kidnapped bride. There’s hardly a foe that doesn’t want to rush into wedlock with the lady in the Party City “Sexy Grasshopper” costume.

You sign up for shots like this when you got shrinking superheroes. (original French publication, Editions Lug)

For that matter, their final teammate also has it bad for Saltarella, and that’s Bobby Crabb -- the patriotic combination crab/football superhero which America didn’t even know it needed, the ever-loving blue-shell Crabb!

A former championship boxer (and entomologist!), Bobby cuts the finest figure in a team of secondary palettes. With a crabshell body and claw-like right hand painted in the stars-and-stripes of the good ol’ red-white-and-blue, no superhero in existence looks more like he’d been purchased at a gift shop in Florida.

YAAAHOOOOOU! (original French publication, Editions Lug)

Crabb has the same flight and size-changing powers as his compatriots, and probably some additional strength and toughness owing to the armor, but he loses out on ray-beams or tripping out on cosmic radio waves or getting the girl.

(The love triangle may scream “Fantastic Four” to some, but those with refined tastes might compare it to something like Charlton Comics’ The Sentinels -- A romance between a dynamic woman, a movie star superhero, and an emotional wreck of a roughneck who doesn’t stand a chance.)

Crabb feels a kinship to the monkey astronaut on an American rocket (original French publication, Editions Lug)

Over their nearly-eighty issue run, Mikros and pals went on to face a passel of fancy French-speaking foes from all over the continent and beyond. The secret society PSI becomes a recurring menace — even so far as to reappear in a later “sequel” to Mikros, titled Epsilon. Originally under the control of the now-deceased Raoul de Roquemaure, Count of Monsegur, leadership of PSI passes to his widow the Countess, whose scarred features make for many melodramatic reveals.

Lesser foes include the leering Cogliostro, a self-proclaimed master of magic, and the fully armored and virus-laden gunman Microbios. Voudou is an African villain who sports a spear, an afro and a leopard-print costume that includes booties, shorts and a cape, just to warn you in advance.

Ever the third wheel, Crabb is entranced by an outer-space diva named Bandora, under whose influence he helps demolish Sacramento. He eventually gets over it.

Prominent members of the secret society called PSI — all the usual culprits for the era… (original French publication, Editions Lug)

Mikros and his creator Jean-Yves Mitton have enjoyed several revivals over the last few years, including some lovely reprint editions and a successful overseas Kickstarter which resulted in a very desirable hardcover compendium titled The Official Handbook of the Mitton Universe.

By contrast, precious little information seems available in English on the web and there has not been, to my knowledge, any translations which have been made for the English-language market (Everything assembled for this article came from poring over what I could find of the original French versions and later German translations). This means that English-language readers are really missing out on one of the most unique and curious superhero comics in recent decades.

As a so-called American-style comic assembled by canny French creators, Mikros is fascinating for providing a European perspective on a pervasive pop culture phenomenon through a new lens. As rare as copies are in English, much of the series can only really be experienced by readers through other foreign-language, non-english reprint volumes.

Cool French Comics was an invaluable resource for this article.

How Weird was Weird Comics? Part 3

2025-02-21T08:30:00.000-08:00

For twenty issues, between April 1940 and January 1942, Fox Publications released an anthology series titled Weird Comics. The stories inside those pages were light on internal continuity, represented a wide variety of genres — including westerns, sci-fi and jungle action — and were produced almost exclusively under pen names (although creators Don Rico, Louis Cazeneuve and Joe Simon, to name a few, have their fingerprints over broad swaths of the titles).

There were seventeen features across the lifespan of Weird, some better than the others — but the real question is “How weird were they?” If Weird Comics is going to promise weird comics, then they better deliver!

In this conclusion, it’s the dashing Dart, the energetic Dynamo, the soaring Eagle, the savage Marga The Panther Woman, and the supernatural Voodoo Man …

THE DART by Jerry Arbus
Issues 5-20

Sounds good, be back by lunch.

Terror of the Ancient Roman rackets (which sounds like a tennis club), the invincible Caius Martius battles evil in the age of Caesar with the power of his strong sword-arm and his uncanny ability to dart through the air!

“Darting” was “flight” in everything except name, albeit used sparingly and in short bursts. But publisher Vincent Fox had already lost a copyright case from Superman’s publisher, National, and was probably shy about inviting any more comparisons between the Man of Steel to his stable of characters.

In any case -- Such a menace was Caius Martius to the criminal underworld of antiquity that they conspired to lay him low with a sinister plot. Dissolved by sorcerous means and imprisoned in rock, Caius emerges unharmed 2200 years later, atop his stone prison in a modern-day museum. As is typical for a time-tossed character in the world of comics, he wanders outside and promptly gets into it with a couple of automobiles.

Egads!

Caius also witnesses an orphan happen right before his eyes as a vicious drive-by shooting robs young Ace Barlow of his parents.

Somehow adopting Ace, regardless of having just arrived from 250 BC, Caius trains the boy in Roman Wrestling and in darting through the air 101. Having therefore taken care of all of a young orphan’s needs, the duo run into adventure as the masked vigilante The Dart and his bat-swinging kid sidekick, Ace the Amazing Boy!

This happens over the course of two pages in the same story. There’s no way that this kid can remember so much as a single state capitol.

The Dart, of course, continues to wield his Roman sword -- and boy does he wield it!

Crooks have never been quite so seriously stabbed in such high numbers as they are on the point of The Dart’s blade, including through the chest, the neck and right through the head. Of course, he also uses his weapon to disarm crooks, cut guns and even cars in half, and threaten baddies, when he’s not simply slapping them in the face with the flat of the blade.

Ace, armed with his wooden bat, both gives and receives some serious beatings over the course of his career, particularly in the head and face. In one story, Ace must stay home from school because his face is so badly bruised, which is a matter for Child Protective Services.

The duo also acquire a Dartmobile, which is handy because the use of “darting” as a superpower comes and goes over the length of the feature. The Dart also eventually sheathes his sword, although Ace never lets go of that bat.

They’re clearly getting off on this dynamic.

Caius Martius, in his very clever secret identity of Caius Martius Wheeler, takes a job as a mild-mannered history teacher. A fellow teacher, Miss Tilbury, adores The Dart in his superheroic identity and loathes him as a civilian.

While the romantic triangle may seem common and maybe even tedious, it cannot be overstated how much Miss Tilbury loathes Caius Wheeler. Practically every installment ends with one or two panels of Miss Tilbury venomously upbraiding Caius Wheeler for lacking courage, wits and even manhood. She accuses him of causing the suicide of a fellow teacher and turns him in to the police on suspicion of murder. But man, she loves The Dart.

How weird was The Dart? One episode addresses the horrors of reefer madness, in which a promising student takes to the devil’s weed and ends up attacking his classroom with an axe. His strength is also magnified by the terrible drug. You have to wonder if this is stuff Miss Tillbury takes.

DYNAMO by Harry Weber

Issues: 8-19

If there’s anything you can say for Fox Comic’s lightning-charged Dynamo, it’s that he’s certainly one of the few superheroes in comics to strap himself into an electric chair before every adventure.

He even takes it on vacation.

That’s because electrical engineer Jim Andrews has “become dynamic through an electric shock” and wields the power of Dynamo!

Immensely powerful beginning in his debut in Weird’s sister publication, Science Comics, Jim must rely on constantly recharging his amazing powers from electrical sources. Sometimes that means picking up a charge from a hanging powerline, or from the ambient static electricity generated by mechanical death-traps, or sometimes just sticking his finger in an outlet and drinking up electricity like an episode of Mork and Mindy.

When none of those options are available, however, Jim keeps a fully-functional electric chair — as well as other powerful electric devices — handy in his home lab, which must cause absolute misery for his neighbors. “Electricity’s going out again, must be Jim ritually electrocuting himself.”

“Raths-sberries!”

Absorbing vast amounts of electricity grants Jim an amazing array of powers, including (but not limited to): Shoot lightning, be strong, intercept radio signals, melt asphalt, melt bombs, all sorts of general melting, freeze molten steel (?), repulse water, repulse boats, fix boats, read minds electrically, do ventriloquism, blow up planes, blow up boats, just generally blow things up and flight. As the feature continues, Jim’s powers mellow out a bit. In his last few adventures, for the most part, he’s reduced to shooting the occasional lightning bolt.

Despite this atlas of superhuman abilities, Jim frequently runs out of power and must rely on his wits.

In one episode, he leaves his cape behind in the hopes that a pursuing crook will pause to put it on and then be shot by his fellow crooks, which is exactly what happens. Very clever, this Dynamo.

Jim, in his civilian identity as an electrical engineer, often finds himself in the field when trouble occurs. With the defense industry heavily relying on engineers, Jim has a selection of saboteurs and spies to keep himself occupied in his colorful alternate identity.

"Oopsy-doodle!"

How Weird Was Dynamo? In his first appearance in Science Comics No.1, the hero was called Electro. The name already having been claimed by another comic book character, Electro was rechristened Dynamo in his next appearance. Fox’s famously hasty schedules, however, were probably responsible for Dynamo sporting the letter “E” on his costume for two more issues.

Right in the hearts!

THE EAGLE By Lester Raye

Issues: 8-20

Independently wealthy scientist Bill Powers invents a special antigravity serum which - when spritzed liberally on a special uniform - grants him a raptor-like faculty for flight.

Seeing the crimefighting potential for his potent potion, he adopts the identity of the high-flying Eagle, leaping into battle against racketeers and other creeps.

The Eagle’s foes often use trap-doors on the hero, forgetting that he can float.

The Eagle seems to have a whole walk-in closet full of special uniforms. In his inaugural run in Science Comics, it’s a fanfare of feathered finery in a catalog of colors – green, red, brown and gold – that make him look more like The Woodpecker, or a Grackle.

By the time he moves to Weird Comics, he’s adopted a sleek blue union suit and flowing red cape, which he continues to wear (sometimes shirtless) for a dozen more issues. Finally, he decks himself out in patriotic plumage for the end of his existence, slapping a striped red-and-white cloak onto the back of his blue togs.

Whatever his wardrobe, the method of applying the anti-gravity serum remained fairly consistent. When he wasn’t merely pouring cupfuls of the liquid on his clothing, Bill would apply it using one of those old-time metal pesticide sprayers, like a Bugs Bunny cartoon.

spritz spritz

Not only wealthy in workwear, anti-gravity serum, and money, The Eagle was also abounding with supporting characters.

His butler Jason, unaware that his master maintained a dual identity, would thrill at the newspaper reports of The Eagle’s derring-do. Bill’s subsequent stint in the Army leaves Jason behind, but replaces him with the plucky and daring Sally, and the hapless farmboy cadet Lem.

Lem is a serious danger to himself and others. His capacity for self-harm is phenomenal. He groggily attempts to fight the Eagle in one story, getting his face pushed in for his trouble. In another, Lem manages to step into the same fox-trap twice – the first time, with his face. Lem surely must have died between issues.

Besides these others, Bill’s pre-eminent partner is Buddy, The Daredevil Boy!

Leaping out of nowhere to aid the Eagle during a deadly struggle, the otherwise anonymous young boy signs on as the hero’s sidekick despite having no powers or special abilities – and the Eagle offers him none!

Assisting the hero only in gym shorts and a string tee, Buddy only gets a costume of his own near the end of the run – but still no powers. Dressed in a junior-sized version of the Eagle’s blue tunic and striped cape, Buddy must fly through the air by riding on the Eagle’s back with his arms clutched around the hero’s neck. How Buddy gets around when the Eagle doesn’t carry him is anyone’s guess.

Buddy takes an Uber.

Unusually for a Fox feature at the time, The Eagle also boasted recurring villains.

The Gimp was a disfigured criminal who sported a wooden leg with a knife in it, while The Beast sported a spade-like claw in place of his right arm. The two criminals didn’t get along, and were often facing off against one another when the Eagle and Buddy get involved.

Strangely, considering his brutal reputation, The Beast seemed uneager to use his sharpened appendage against his nemesis, knocking the Eagle unconscious with a blow from the blunt side of his claw on three different occasions (Buddy gets the same treatment five times).

Bonk!

Getting knocked unconscious is not unusual for The Eagle. Not counting the nasty knocks provided by The Beast, Bill is otherwise knocked out on another five occasions over twelve appearances. Any further inconsistencies in the strip could be attributed to how often The Eagle takes a wooden chair to the noggin.

The Eagle goes on to helm his own comic for four issues in 1941. Avid fans could sign up to The Eagle’s fan club, The American Eagle Defenders, which included a membership badge, card and secret code.

“Be sure to drink your Ovaltine”

How Weird Was The Eagle? It’s hard to estimate how expensive the anti-gravity formula was, especially when dispensed by the gallon, but eventually The Eagle gives up soaring, floating and flying. In his last few Weird appearances, he and Buddy have to rely on planes to fly and parachutes to keep from splattering against the ground.

I learned the word “fastness” from this introduction.

MARGA THE PANTHER WOMAN by James J.Royal

Issues: 8-20

In his hidden jungle laboratory, the mad physio-biologist Dr.Von Dorf abducts a blonde American nurse and transforms her into a savage brunette by the secret process of injecting panther blood into a living human body.

Understandably distressed by the sudden dye-job, the feral female attacks the doctor, leaving him for dead, and flees into the forest. With what little life remains in him, Von Dorf clumsily blows up his own laboratory, dying in the explosion and taking with him the secret of pouring a bunch of panther blood into a person. Well, that’s Dorf for ya!

Marga proves capable of bursting into flame. She only does this once but, to be fair, most people who burst into flame only do it once.

In the jungle, Marga discovers that she now possesses powerful new animal senses – and urges! After killing a deer and smacking a lion around a little, the savage Marga finds a soothing influence in a new human friend, the blandly handsome aviator Ted Grant.

By the time of her second appearance, Marga’s origin is simplified to her having been raised by a pack of panthers and then, later, being “a white girl inoculated with the traits of a black panther.” Somehow, they both seem less absurd than having been pumped up with cat juice, so let’s take it.

Marga possesses the heightened senses of the jungle predator, as well as agility, speed and strength. Of particular power is her teeth. Like the big cat from which she draws her name/blood, Marga can kill by ripping out her opponents’ throats – she dispenses a gorilla, a lion and a panther in this fashion. Must be hell on necking.

“Madame, please — I’m married!”

Wise to the ways of the jungle, Marga spends many of her adventures undoing the schemes of would-be tribal tyrants and protecting valuable gems and minerals from unsavory hands. She also briefly takes on an espionage job.

Unlike most other Jungle Girl-type characters, she does very little in the way of putting a halt to poachers. This is probably because she’s too busy ripping the throats out of the local wildlife herself.

Besides Ted, Marga counts among her allies “Chimp,” a tiny monkey who conveniently brings her messages and alarms when needed.

Unlike many other jungle heroes, none of the larger animals of the wild come to Marga’s aid, probably because she’s ended so many of their lives. Over the course of the strip, she chucks at least six jungle cats and one rhinoceros into deadly pits, and rips half a trunk from a rampaging elephant, which is the last thing you’d do to an elephant if you were trying to calm it down.

Also one time she and a costumed Ted Grant beat up pygmies using other pygmies as weapons, which you have to admit is hella weird.

How weird is Marga The Panther Woman? Like fellow Weird Comics features The Eagle, The Dart and Dynamo, Marga initially appeared as an ongoing adventure in several issues of Science Comics. In that book, she spends the back half of her first appearance stealing a spaceship. That’s right, this strip originally took place in the future! By the time she arrives in Weird, Marga’s milieu is the modern-day setting of the then-popular Jungle Girl genre, which is a shame. Outer space probably has jungles too!

VOODOO MAN by Allan Spectre

Issues: 1-7

”…Zombies are way out of your league.”

Voodooman isn’t the only feature in Weird Comics to be named for its recurring villain, or to change creative teams between practically every installment. But none of the other alumni played quite as fast and loose with its own continuity as this one did!

The titular Voodoo Man is “Boanga,” an evil and powerful houngan of colonial Haiti whose pursuit of mastery over life and death puts him in frequent conflict with the white settlers of the region — particularly the heroic Dr.Bob Warren. Those are the basics. After that, pretty much everything else is up in the air.

Because Voodoo Man was a feature that simply couldn’t stop rebooting itself!

For instance, Bob is frequently assisted by “Pedro,” sometimes referred to as “Petro,” a sidekick who is sometimes a brooding white-haired gentleman in jodhpurs, sometimes a young local, and sometimes an older local.

There is also almost always a young white woman to fall prey to Voodoo Man’s spooky machinations, but never the same one twice. Bob is sometimes a local doctor, sometimes an operative of the government, and – halfway through the strip’s run, when he’d already starred in a half-dozen adventures — a newcomer to the storyline.

That’ll show him.

Voodoo Man himself has a habit of dying at the end of each chapter and reappearing without explanation in the next (although, as with many things, surely the explanation is voodoo!).

Boanga doesn’t even appear at all in one adventure, being replaced by a character in Mayan dress who is referred to as The Grand Zombie. Lucifer himself makes a singular appearance as Boanga’s boss, decked out in Mephistophelean costume as he’s driven from the body of a hypnotized victim.

Tell that to Frank Oz!

Boanga’s powers are vast. Besides creating common-or-garden zombies, he can also transform people into animals, command the panthers of the deep jungle, and summon Lucifer’s Goat-Men – satyr-like creatures who “deal with fire,” which makes them sound like insurance adjusters. His most enchanting performance involved hypnotizing his victim with ventriloquism and a large frog.

Bob and his allies occasionally employ magic to battle back against Voodoo Man.

A sympathetic houngan provides Pedro with the head of a golden bird, the power of which was called forward with the magic words “Swambi no gara” (That phrase is either absolute nonsense or means “I’m giving you the bird”). Crucifixes were occasionally wielded to ward off evil spirits, and the white settlers weren’t above terrifying their foes with burning crosses. But then, they’re like that sometimes.

How weird was Voodoo Man? In the pages of Weird Comics, Voodoo Man was a clearly demonstrable villain, frequently setting his sights on murder, mayhem, and forced zombification. However, readers who came over from the character’s sole appearance in Samson Comics #3 might have had a different perspective – in that story, Voodoo Man is called upon to avenge the cruel beatings and deaths of black slaves at the hands of a local plantation owner. “He deserved to die from what I know of him” says one of Bob’s friends as they survey the corpse, “But we can’t have white men murdered.” Sure you can! All you need is a little voodoo.

How Weird was Weird Comics? Part 2

2025-02-19T09:00:00.000-08:00

In Part Two, it’s the futuristic Blast Bennet, the insidious Doctor Mortal, the explosive Dynamite Thor, the undersea adventurer Navy Jones and barnstormer Swoop Curtiss …

And they seem to be doing a great job.

BLAST BENNET by Spencer Allan
Appears in issues 1-9, 11-17

The “When” of Blast Bennett’s futuristic adventures is a little vague, but it’s clearly some time after the distant year of 1970 AD (A space pirate treasure map discovered in one adventure claims to have been buried around that time). Whenever it is, space travel is common and the celestial spheres of the solar system are open to exploration – and exploitation!

Give ‘im another one, he’s earned it.

The “Why” of Blast Bennett’s futuristic adventures is even more vague. Assisted by his nearly-incompetent kid sidekick Red, Blast travels the breadth of the width of the solar system for no particularly good reason except to get into fights.

Despite being armed with an “Explosion Gun,” and having all manner of futuristic weaponry available to him, Blast prefers his fists. Besides battering a plethora of creeps, crooks and cretins, Blast also takes time to knock out several monstrously large aliens, many large alien-y monsters, and robots of assorted sizes. It’s all for the greater good.

Blast’s adventures rarely rise above the standard science fiction adventure story of the day – an alien princess requiring rescue, some crooks hiding out on an asteroid, a monster menacing a meteor. Lest the remedial threats prove too easy for Blast, Red was always there to complicate matters with his baffling inability to do much right.

Despite the standard-issue sci-fi threats that monopolized his feature, Blast knows a few foes by name – a Zom here, a Karnak there. The most interesting villain is almost Ann Harper, a debutante turned space pirate, whose momentum is abbreviated when Blast locks her in a box.

Me at the self checkout lane.

While the strip was credited to “Spencer Allen,” it was – like many Weird Comics features – at least penciled by Don Rico.

Despite being independent operators, Red and Blast eagerly join the Space Patrol in Weird Comics #13. “Gee! Now we’re cops!” exclaims Red. Keep it to yourself, kid.

How weird was Blast Bennet? An entertaining feature of Blast Bennet was the multiple attempts for the letterer to correctly spell “immensities” in the opening blurb of each story. Both “immenseties” and “emensities” make their presence known in different stories. This is probably why most science fiction writers opt for “vastness.”

Opening panel from “Dr.Mortal and the Manicure of Terror.”

DOCTOR MORTAL by Godfrey Clarke

Appears in issues 1-16

One of two long-running features in Weird Comics to feature a villain (see also Sorceress of Zoom), Dr.Mortal tells the tale of a mad scientist bent on world domination, and the stone-cold headaches that his niece Marlene and her fiancée Gary Brent cause him.

Mortal’s modus operandi is kidnapping innocent men off the street and turning them into monsters, for his own purposes. It’s made pretty clear that these kinds of antics led to Mortal being “kicked out of the medical profession,” according to more than one introductory caption. You don’t usually find out how mad scientists earned their PhDs…

When next-door neighbors don’t get along…

For the most part, Mortal is content to assemble lumbering, fanged brutes for his own purposes, but he often busts out a specialty model.

For example, he jams a corpse filled with lion entrails into a steam bath and creates a ferocious Lion Man. On another occasion, he makes a “super-automaton,” which turns on him before being destroyed.

He can shrink his foes to the size of insects, or enlarge insects to the size of men, and gives recaptured youth to old wealthy clients by transferring their minds into the bodies of young healthy victims, just to name a few of his proclivities. He’s like the Amazon.com of body horror.

His niece Marlene (who does, once or twice, refer to him as “Father”) frequently intuits that her uncle is up to no good, which is the cue for Gary and the police to scupper the old man’s fearsome fiddle-di-dees. This usually results in the apparent death of the Doctor.

Consistently, in these moments, Gary will manfully clutch Marlene around the shoulders and say “we’ve surely seen the last of him,” only for Marlene to ponder “Or have we?” Some strips never get a finale, but this one’s got nothing but!

Oh, what makes you say that?

Mortal possesses remarkable flair, even for a mad scientist. On one occasion, in order to warn his niece and her fiance to stay out of his way, Mortal orders that Gary be attacked with a strong swat to the face by a monster henchman wielding a rubber stamp, resulting in the message “Keep out of my way … or die!” rising in red welts on Gary’s cheek, complete with Dr.Mortal’s signature.

“Now I can wreak my revenge on society” serves as Mortal’s colorful catchphrase, a triumphant exclamation which caps off his more successful experiments. When, in one adventure, he proves that his monster henchmen can breathe under water, for instance, he celebrates by declaring that it’s time to start his revenge against society. When he perfects a monster who can dig through the ground like a cartoon mole, same deal.

How weird was Doctor Mortal? While not exactly an exceptional piece of Golden Age storytelling, it's got inklings of a formula that works -- a little funny and a little terrifying. A story in which he injects a corpse’s memory into a gorilla is both absurd on the face of it and surprisingly creepy, as a for instance.

DYNAMITE THOR by Wright Lincoln

Appears in issues 6-7

Dedicated to “blasting the rackets to atoms,” demolitions expert Peter Thor uses his almost-supernatural skills with dynamite to fight crime as – Dynamite Thor, The Explosion Man!

You know what would fix that? Dynamite.

Bare-legged and maskless, Dynamite is sometimes portrayed with a golden cape, and the starburst emblem on his chest is sometimes enhanced with a signature “T.” What Dynamite Thor always counts among his most flamboyant accessories, however, is the belt full of dynamite from which he produces his crimefighting je ne sais quoi. In many ways, it’s similar to Batman’s utility belt, if everything in Batman’s utility belt exploded.

Although his stories fail to delve into the technical details, Dynamite’s combustible craftiness puts him in command of a wide array of creatively volatile bombs.

Most of his arsenal is capable only of crude destruction. In the course of his adventures, Dynamite Thor puts an explosive end to planes, bombs, torpedos, buildings, guns and ships.

With more specific explosive concoctions, he’s capable of generating shaped blasts which will cleanly knock a thick oak door from its hinges, and more subtle ones which will harmlessly knock the gun out of a crook’s hand, claiming nary a finger.

The upper limit of his inflammable armory can only be guessed at – at one point, he douses a raging fuel depot inferno with a single shot!

What could he be planning?

Other charges are capable of practically-surgical strikes. At one point, Dynamite Thor uses explosives to silently remove the roof from a crooks’ hideout. His bombs were also capable of quietly and invisibly melting metal, targeting other bombs and missiles, and – in some unexplained fashion – “counteracting acid.”

Peter also demonstrates, on more than one occasion, the ability to tightrope walk across power lines. In fact, it seems to be his second favorite form of locomotion.

Because Dynamite Thor’s most audacious use of bombs is – flight!

“Immune to the effects of explosives,” explains one caption, “He can propel himself through the air with dynamite.” Technically speaking, anyone can propel themselves through the air with dynamite. It’s landing in one piece which is the real trick, and which Peter carries out by somehow having inoculated himself against the destructive effects of dynamite.

(The visual effect which denotes Peter’s passage through the air is, typically, little clouds emerging at equal distances behind him at waist-height. There is not a soul on Earth mature enough to look at a drawing of Dynamite Thor launching himself across the sky and to not think it looks like he’s tooting out little guffs.

See?

Despite laughing off bomb bursts, Thor remains vulnerable to all other sorts of non-explosive physical injury, including gunfire or a conk on the head.

If, for even a moment, you thought he might be vulnerable to Atom Rays, well, one story takes pains to point out that Dynamite Thor has a Neutron Shield just for that very complication. I don’t know what any of that means

“He uses his expert knowledge of high explosives to rid the world of crime” explains one caption, which might account for the unusually high rate of property damage in a Dynamite Thor feature. Besides knocking out Nazi war machines, Thor also has a habit of catching crooks by blowing good ol’ American bridges out from under them, or causing municipal chaos by dropping a water tower on a fleeing foe.

How weird was Dynamite Thor? Dynamite Thor runs in two issues of Weird before finishing up in Blue Beetle Comics. In Weird, he follows the run of an unrelated hero with a similar name (see Thor, God of Thunder). Both men, in their secret identities, have a girlfriend named Glenda. I like to think she’s the same girl in both series, and she’s got a type – Thors.

First draft of Yellow Submarine

NAVY JONES by Bert Whitman

Appears in issues 8, 10

Navy Jones had been a journeyman feature elsewhere in Fox’s line, mostly – and originally – from Science Comics. This, of course, not only raises the question of whether Navy Jones was weird enough for Weird Comics, but also whether he was scientific enough for Science Comics.

“We’ll get there when we damn well please.”

Judge for yourself. Replacing Weird Comics’ previous undersea strip – the often-confusing Typhon – Navy Jones told the tale of the former commander of the deep-sea submarine Z-81 turned champion of the kingdom of Princess Coral. Sounds like nice work.

Rescued from his sinking sub -- which had collided with a mine “from a long-forgotten war” -- Navy is taken before the human ruler of a nation of fearsome-looking fish-men.

Jones has the bad luck of showing up during the Prime Minister’s power grab, which gets him pelted with chunks of reef by a vicious mob of mackerel. I think the Prime Minister is a crab, by the way. In any case, the King hooks Navy Jones up with some life-saving surgery that makes the former surface-dweller into a 24-7 water-breather, and also his daughter’s number.

In the pages of Weird, Navy Jones only takes the boat out twice:

Have they been drinking?

First, the Princess and Jones help rout an invasion of the good ol’ USA by “the dictator of Europe,” with the help of longtime pal and frequent ally Captain Nemo. The trio handily scuppers the foreign tyrant’s phalanx of underwater tanks, which is a sentence I bet you didn’t expect to read today.

In his second Weird Comics appearance, Navy puts a definitive end to a deep-sea bunker full of pirates by burning a hole in their protective dome and letting the ocean pressure finish the job. Well, what do you know – It’s scientific enough for Science Comics after all!

How weird was Navy Jones? While they don't make a big deal about it, Jones is a direct descendant of Davy Jones, understood in sailor lingo to be the devil. You think that would come up more often.

He’s gettin’ it right between the F and the Z!

SWOOP CURTISS by Robert Keen

Appears in issues 17-20

American flyboys “Swoop” Curtiss (sometimes “Curtis”) and his brobdingnagian buddy, the burly “Banana-Boat,” find themselves “fighting side by side with the gallant flyers of the R.A.F.” after a slight navigational error drops them in England in the middle of The Blitz. They were trying to get to Maine.

The 3,000-mile mistake is the responsibility of Banana-Boat (sometimes only “Bananaboat”), a well-meaning but titanic idiot who ends up hindering Swoop’s heroics as often as he’s helpful. BB’s not much of a bombardier (he’s too big), or a gunner (too big), or even a co-pilot (he overshoots their destination by a whole ocean), and he has a habit of falling out of airplanes (twice).

To his credit, he sometimes stumbles into heroics of his own. On one occasion, he successfully infiltrates a Nazi airdome in a stolen uniform two sizes too small, then casually ignites the fuel supply, destroying countless enemy aircraft. They’re gonna give him a medal for being this big and dumb.

Banana-Boat is why we lost the war.

Swoop, by contrast, can’t do much wrong. A dashing and daring pilot of Squadron FZ (That would be “F-Zed”), the impulsive Curtiss is as often an annoyance to his superiors as he is to the Luftwaffe. Regardless, he’s able to pull off astonishing aerobatic maneuvers like landing a stolen Fokker on the back of a British bomber in mid-flight, or intercepting plummeting parachutists with an outstretched hand.

Despite his brief run, Swoop is around long enough to pick up a Nazi nemesis. Both on the ground and in the air, he is drawn into conflict with a notorious Deutsche dogfighter named Gorrit. The vicious Gorrit frequently targets civilians, which makes him an extra-nasty Nazi. He’s still at large when the strip ends with Weird Comics #20.

How weird is Swoop Curtiss? Entertainingly drawn by a pseudonymous Robert Keen, Swoop Curtiss shouldn’t be confused with other aerial adventurers Swoop Smith (boy pilot), or Cloud Curtis (man pilot), or even Swoop Storm (World’s Youngest Flyer), all from rival Lev Gleason Comics.

Coming up in Part 3: The propulsive Dart, the dynamic Dynamo, the patriotic Eagle, Marga the ferocious Panther Woman and the dire jungle saga of Voodooman …