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Post by wildfire2099 on May 19, 2020 23:25:11 GMT -5
SO, Hit Comics... this was definitely my favorite one in the thread so far! Nice variety, WAY better art and (more glaringly) color separations, and decent stories. Nothing fantastic (Kid Eternity actually was kinda hard to follow, and the others were pretty average), but no clunkers either (Well, Great Defender was very close to a clunker).
Though, 'Swab Decker'... really? Betty Bates was definitely awesome, and I liked Don Glory too.. nice message there.
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Post by electricmastro on May 19, 2020 23:48:15 GMT -5
Also interesting story with Doctor Occult, whom I think is the only character from this comic DC still uses to this day.  |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 20, 2020 2:36:22 GMT -5
Also interesting story with Doctor Occult, whom I think is the only character from this comic DC still uses to this day. Funny how Shuster draws all his leading men exactly the same, isn't it? |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 20, 2020 8:25:52 GMT -5
After 25 discussions, this club may be wearing down. We'll give this next one (long requested) a try and see if we get a few more responses. If not, we had a good two month run! Discussion #26... |
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Post by MWGallaher on May 20, 2020 10:08:58 GMT -5
Hey, I love Jack Cole. This oughtta be great! Interesting to see that he got such prominent cover credit way back then. Although we think of cover credit as a modern development, there were plenty of precedents, with Cole, Simon and Kirby, Ditko and Lee, Kirby and Lee... So lemme just give this a quick read and enjoy some whimsical Plastic Man escapades...
What the...!?
"Laugh?...Cry?...and Shudder??" This is one bizarrely brutal crime story, with explicit child abuse, gruesome death, and a hypnotic kewpie-doll of a tyke, rendered in Cole's Eisner-inspired style. What a schizophrenic melange of horrifying imagery and poor-little-orphan pathos!
Next, a reprint of an early Spirit section. Eisner was refining his story-telling approach, with a nicely plotted story of vengeance-seeking quadruplets, but still had some fantastical elements like a flying car that would come to seem out of place as the Spirit grew more down-to-earth.
The Human Bomb character fascinated me from my first exposure to him in the JLA/JSA Earth-X team-up. I knew that the Human Bomb became more of a plain-clothes operator (he only wears the distinctive "hazmat" suit for a couple of pages here), but I didn't know he had his own team of partners, the Bombardiers. The story's not clear, but it appears that at least one of the sidekicks has Human Bomb-like powers in his hands, that seems to be less explosive than HB's. I'm curious now to read more and see how this feature evolved. I know at some point he had a single sidekick with bomb-power in his feet (Throckmorton?).
Manhunter's a nicely drawn feature. I guess a masked hero teamed with a dog had some appeal, especially for boys with pet dogs who wanted to pretend. I do always wonder about Golden Age (and even later) comics that opted so often for bare-legged heroes. It never would have appealed to me, although it never bothered me on Plastic Man.
Destiny got my attention a couple of years back as the in-story replacement for the more interesting 711, who died in an earlier issue of Police Comics. The art's amateurish--if this is indeed Jack Keller's work, he got a lot better!
Phantom Lady and Spider Widow part ways after a rare Golden Age crossover! Sexy poses, that distinctive but hard to pinpoint Quality Comics house style, but not a lot of substance in this essentially 4 1/2 page tale.
Gotta pass on the humor features--my eyes glass over quickly on these. They always seem more effort than I can muster.
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Post by electricmastro on May 20, 2020 11:25:28 GMT -5
After 25 discussions, this club may be wearing down. We'll give this next one (long requested) a try and see if we get a few more responses. If not, we had a good two month run! Discussion #26... I mean, I suppose this thread could turn into a more casual, general discussion instead an “assignment-based” one. I know there are many public domain comics to talk the history about and such either way, so we’ll see where it goes until then. |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 20, 2020 12:42:11 GMT -5
It could certainly go that route.
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Post by electricmastro on May 20, 2020 13:02:18 GMT -5
Hey, I love Jack Cole. This oughtta be great! Interesting to see that he got such prominent cover credit way back then. Although we think of cover credit as a modern development, there were plenty of precedents, with Cole, Simon and Kirby, Ditko and Lee, Kirby and Lee... So lemme just give this a quick read and enjoy some whimsical Plastic Man escapades... What the...!? "Laugh?...Cry?...and Shudder??" This is one bizarrely brutal crime story, with explicit child abuse, gruesome death, and a hypnotic kewpie-doll of a tyke, rendered in Cole's Eisner-inspired style. What a schizophrenic melange of horrifying imagery and poor-little-orphan pathos! Next, a reprint of an early Spirit section. Eisner was refining his story-telling approach, with a nicely plotted story of vengeance-seeking quadruplets, but still had some fantastical elements like a flying car that would come to seem out of place as the Spirit grew more down-to-earth. The Human Bomb character fascinated me from my first exposure to him in the JLA/JSA Earth-X team-up. I knew that the Human Bomb became more of a plain-clothes operator (he only wears the distinctive "hazmat" suit for a couple of pages here), but I didn't know he had his own team of partners, the Bombardiers. The story's not clear, but it appears that at least one of the sidekicks has Human Bomb-like powers in his hands, that seems to be less explosive than HB's. I'm curious now to read more and see how this feature evolved. I know at some point he had a single sidekick with bomb-power in his feet (Throckmorton?). Manhunter's a nicely drawn feature. I guess a masked hero teamed with a dog had some appeal, especially for boys with pet dogs who wanted to pretend. I do always wonder about Golden Age (and even later) comics that opted so often for bare-legged heroes. It never would have appealed to me, although it never bothered me on Plastic Man. Destiny got my attention a couple of years back as the in-story replacement for the more interesting 711, who died in an earlier issue of Police Comics. The art's amateurish--if this is indeed Jack Keller's work, he got a lot better! Phantom Lady and Spider Widow part ways after a rare Golden Age crossover! Sexy poses, that distinctive but hard to pinpoint Quality Comics house style, but not a lot of substance in this essentially 4 1/2 page tale. Gotta pass on the humor features--my eyes glass over quickly on these. They always seem more effort than I can muster. Yeah, I suggest this one partially for how I felt Cole showcased comedy in contrast with more serious drama with the child abuse in his storytelling. It doesn’t particularly show off how wacky Cole could get with his drawings, but I felt the endearing quality of it still shined through.  |
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 22, 2020 6:38:38 GMT -5
Discussions #27...  Pep Comics #41 (August 1943)An odd transition period for Pep in which Archie and The Shield were sharing front covers, illustrating a larger shift occurring in comicdom as interest in superheroes declined and teen humor titles were on the rise.May 22nd thru May 23rdA free and legal public domain scan can be found here |
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Post by MWGallaher on May 22, 2020 8:45:47 GMT -5
Curious that the scan has front-loaded advertising content. The full-page ad for Veronica Lodge in Archie Comics seems to anticipate one of the funniest running gags from Mad's "Starchie" parody, in that every single one of the dancing girls looks identical except for hair color, so why are the older men in the audience so hot for teen-age Veronica specifically? And very lovely image of athlete's foot, thanks a lot...
The "original" Shield and Dusty, the Boy Detective: Artist Irv Novick is very clearly aping Simon and Kirby with his artwork, his layouts, and his curved panel borders, and even the costume seems to have been modified from the bulky design (which I always disliked) to something that looks a little more like Captain America's. He may be "the original" but it's clear who was the consumer favorite. It seems Monstro the Timid Martian is a carryover character from the previous issue, and he's played for "laughs". It looks like everybody thought comic relief was needed in the superhero features of '43!
The Hangman seems to be playing it straight with its grim but unimpressively-costumed lead, but then we get a naive professor type in Jeremiah Q. Obvious harboring crooks so that he can psychoanalyze them. Not much of a story here, and not much genuine humor, but the closing panel suggests the creators were thinking about making him a regular. See what I mean?
I enjoy seeing the sort of weird, sort of ugly (especially Jughead!) art in the Archie story. Seeing the early stages of what would evolve into its own "species" of comic styling is fascinating. Archie himself is a bit more of a dopey screw-up at this stage rather than a clever one.
Captain Commando and the Boy Soldiers: Wow, they were shameless about borrowing from Simon and Kirby, and they can't argue that this one is "the original"! I mean, the wise guy of the Boy Soldiers is named "Flatbush"?! I gotta give 'em some special credit for the glasses-wearing "smart kid" in the bunch, depicted wearing a yarmulke--I don't remember seeing explicitly Jewish characters in any other kid gang features! Novick, again, opening with a shocking scene of Captain C being hanged on a gallows by Nazis! Well, that ups the impact a notch, leading to a bizarre adventure where the kids board a mysterious Roman ship for a trip to the past to battle Nero. Weird, but more engaging than the other adventure strips thus far in the book.
L'il Chief Bugaboo has a shaved mountain lion that looks like Pluto. Cute but stereotype-filled Indian humor, forgettable but visually appealing.
Catfish Joe appears to be a L'il Abner clone done in an Al Capp art style. The Sulman brothers(?) were doing a much more effective Capp imitation over in More Fun Comics and Adventure Comics around this time.
Bentley of Scotland Yard: early Gil Kane, very crude, but you can still see some of his stylistic hallmarks, such as men's trousers that can't hide their muscular calves and thighs. Tedious to plow through the art to get to the bottom of this dense but not very interesting mystery.
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shaxper
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Post by shaxper on May 22, 2020 8:53:08 GMT -5
so why are the older men in the audience so hot for teen-age Veronica specifically? That definitely made me uncomfortable. Isn't Ronnie underage? |
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Post by Prince Hal on May 22, 2020 9:26:01 GMT -5
Just did a quick scan through the issue after reading MWGallaher's great commentary and realized that Gil Kane was about 16 or 17 when he did that artwork for the "Bentley" story. It is fun to see the germ of an artist's style, like those adhesive pants with the sharp creases. You also can see his love of highly articulated fingers, too. |
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Post by electricmastro on May 22, 2020 17:44:49 GMT -5
Just did a quick scan through the issue after reading MWGallaher 's great commentary and realized that Gil Kane was about 16 or 17 when he did that artwork for the "Bentley" story. It is fun to see the germ of an artist's style, like those adhesive pants with the sharp creases. You also can see his love of highly articulated fingers, too. Indeed, as Gil Kane’s earliest confirmed comic book penciling credit was at Archie in 1943, when he was 16. Very well done for some at that age I suppose, though still understandably crude in comparison to how dynamic Kane’s later art would get. He drew women as more good looking than men though if you ask me.  |
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Post by shaxper on May 24, 2020 10:55:49 GMT -5
So I think this reading club has run it's course. Participation is down quite a bit, and this is a lot of work for me to keep going. So, for those of you still enjoying the discussion, let me propose two options for moving forward:
1. Someone else can take over running this thing and, if you like, tweak how it's run.
2. We can open a more general Public Domain appreciation thread with less structure.
Up to you!
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Post by electricmastro on May 24, 2020 11:25:38 GMT -5
So I think this reading club has run it's course. Participation is down quite a bit, and this is a lot of work for me to keep going. So, for those of you still enjoying the discussion, let me propose two options for moving forward: 1. Someone else can take over running this thing and, if you like, tweak how it's run. 2. We can open a more general Public Domain appreciation thread with less structure. Up to you! Yeah, I’d personally be fine with a more general Public Domain appreciation thread. |
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