I loved the cover, though nothing like it was in the issue. (Or did I miss something?)

These stories make one realize how good the plotting and writing are in other Golden Age stories. The Dynamic Man Echo and Yankee Boy just move along in a slapdash manner, with the last couple of panels jamming in plot points to sorta-kinda tie up loose ends that somebody must have noticed as the book was being assembled.

I did like the art for the most part, though. Or in most cases, the art did not make the stories unreadable. (The dialogue almost always nearly accomplished that feat.) Dynamic Man and Mr. E looked like imitation Lou Fine; there were some dynamic panels and layouts compared to what we often see in other comics back then. Check the last page in the Mr. E story for a forerunner of many a Gil Kane Atom layout. Mr. E's weird sidekick(s) are unique at least.

I'm convinced that the Echo story was inspired by Val Lewton's 1942 movie Cat People. Black panther, zoo, woman in distress. Though there was no sidekick named Dr. (or Doc) Doom in the movie.

And they sure loved ugly villains. Not a bad thing, just sayin'. That Red Plague story featured a few grisly-looking faces.

BTW, I'm surprised that Yankee Boy's name didn't get him a mention in a Wertham footnote at least.

And did you notice that Dan Hastings was the hero of the text story and that the villain was mad scientist Dr. Strange? How many Drs. Strange and Doom have there been?

If I were ten years old in 1944, I would have been happy with this book. Not Batman, but great for one of those off-weeks when a good comic wasn't available.

Discussion #18...

I'm a couple behind, but I have to say, I LOVED Phantom Lady! The stories reminded me of the early Superman stuff (exception the first one with the zombies). I'm not sure it's particularly credible that she JUMPED OUT OF A PLANE, and giggled it off as a lark to hide her secret identity, but these are fun stories with good art.. very enjoyable.

Didn't have time for a long response yesterday, so forgive me for sneaking in a response to the Yellow Kid.

I understand what codystarbuck said about the "unfunniness" of the strip. When I do occasionally read it (in a book about comics, say), I look on it as more of a trip back in time and look at it as an artifact. if I get a bit of a laugh from a remark that makes sense to me, all the better.

Reading these older strips is like watching an old movie. Even if the quality of the filmmaking is dated I learn so much from watching what's beneath the surface. I love listening for slang and the idioms and taking note of the costumes and set decoration. Doing so often takes me deeper into the past than I can go while watching one that is more dazzling as a film overall. The same applies when I watch some old sitcom from the 50s or early 60s like Leave it to Beaver.

I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that it reminds me of the combination of immersion and self-hypnosis that Si Morley uses to travel back to the 1880s in Jack Finney's great novel Time and Again. (Highly recommended.)

One other point. Reading the Yellow Kid panoramas reminded me of Myrtle, a strip I looked forward to every Sunday as a kid. It was always a full-page drawing from a (low-flying) bird's-eye view with so much going on that it took me a few minutes to be sure I had read every gag and absorbed every bit of the illustration. Reading these pages was like watching a continuous Steadi-cam shot. It may be that I wasn't as wowed as I might have been by Ray Liotta's walk into the Copa in "Goodfellas" because I'd read Myrtle as a kid.

Other strips used this technique on Sundays, notably a gallery of beautiful "Gasoline Alley" pages that are not just a clever use of the full-page layout, but artistically dazzling. Seek them out. (You can see a good selection of them in "The Smithsonian Book of Comic Strips.")



 

Hadn't known that the Polly strip did this, too...^^^

Anyone else joining me on this one?

shaxper , you ask the eternal questions about Captain Marvel, Jr.

And if Billy Batson can get him on a quiz show, why can't he buy him a jacket and a pair of pants,the poor devil.

I love the artwork on the CM stories here and in general; it's so clean and tidy, not an extra or a wasted line. (The Beck house style is an obvious influence on Liefeld.) And despite the similarity of the layouts, the pages never look dull.

No denying that the artwork is fun -- I can see kids back in the 40s teaching themselves to draw by mimicking it -- and the stories are cute, but they are definitely more juvenile in tone that what DC or Marvel (Timely) were publishing.

I'd place them a notch below the Classic Donald Duck stories I've read. Maybe the animal characters make them easier for me to accept. Here the simplicity and the wholesomeness come across as childish. Are there no characters like Scrooge McDuck, whio can be irritating even though he's a good guy?




Is it possible that the CM brand sold so many copies because parents knew that they were -- to steal a phrase   -- "good" comics, too?

The Captain Kid story is fun, if standard, fare for the time, but that outfit of his... Yeesh! Bad enough he wears that baggy, strappy concoction with apparently nothing underneath it, but worse is that the other kids follow his idiotic lead blindly!