My thoughts on Flint Baker:

I enjoyed it overall.. LOVE the art deco stylings, and the colors, though goofy, really fit somehow. I agree with whoever posted above the "ATTACK!" with the cool font was awesome. The plot, such as it was, was fine.. I did like how they weren't rescuing the princess to marry her, at least. It definitely felt Burroughs-y in story but Flash Gordon in art style to me. THe convict angle was pretty fun, though they made it a point to make sure they're not bad guys with the origins. Killing one off was crazy!!

The sci-fi part, though... wow. That was 37 ways to bad. Here are my notes on the things that jumped up and bit me as horribly terrible.

- The trip to Mars took 'weeks' at '8 miles per second' It should have taken about 12 years at that speed by my math.

- One thing that's pretty standard in space travel stories is to actually mention things like food and air... not here. Not only that, an actual stow away was no problem at all!

- We started out with space helmets, then lost them... I guess there's air? Also, the revolver worked?

- If the Martians had ray guns, why did they fight the one-eyed monsters hand to hand?

-the bad guy had a DEVICE to suck the life out the the Martian princess and let his chosen Earth bride live forever.. the one he could n't have possibly known existed before his goons brought her. Talk about planning!


Auro, Lord of Jupiter

So what I get out of this is a painfully bad Tarzan riff... the art here is pretty horrible... the 'flaming meteorite' that started Auro's origin seems to be a tooth.

Also, the writer needs to get his planets straight... he clearly doesn't know what order they lie in.

It was shocking in a good way to see a female assistant pilot, and a heroic one to boot... sadly, that was the best part.

The Red Comet

This one reminds me of the early Superman strips... the dialogue, the ease at which he dispatches bad guys. IT was cool to see size changing powers actually used effectively, instead of in a medicore way for dramatic effect as some other publishers do. 'Robin Hood of the universe' though? I don't think that means what the writer thinks it means.. I don't recall Robin smashing his enemies then moving on to the next place.

Captain Nelson Cole

Clearly going for a Flash Gordon vibe, but the art is so terrible. No character development either, just plot, which is nothing to write home about. The writer also has no concept of distance.. mentioning they're travelling '300 miles a minute' so they must be 'millions of miles away'. Only if it's been a generation, bud... unless when you say millions you mean '2' millions, then it'd only be a few months... still not what was actually happening.

Spurt Hammond vs. the Lunerzons

There just HAS to be an, er, adult feature of that name somewhere. If there is, it probably has fewer typos that this one does, and made even a more logical plot. This is the 2nd best art of the bunch, though.. I think if this artist drew Cole Nelson it might be pretty good.

Buzz Crandall and the Space Patrol

The title page advertises a whole crew!! I feel cheated... it was just Buzz. This story features some truly horrid alien designs (by far the worst of the lot) and a 100% vanilla plot. At least there were no typos!

Quorak, Super Pirate

Coming in a close 2nd to the feature as best in the book.. Quorak. Nice art (though nothing to exciting design wise), the story is very basic again, but can be followed and , makes logical sense. Not sure when Mt. Everest moved to India, though, or when Pluto became the most powerful planet in the solar system.

Also, best bad guy torture ever: 'Gary is held suspended head down...to die of the pressure of blood to his head'


Overall, I'm glad I read this, it was fun, but I don't know that I need to read any more for a while. The lack of basic space knowledge is a bit shocking to me.. at least know what planets exist and in what order!

And she'd been casually sitting there all along, with no space suit and not even a seat belt.





I sort of knew from the first few panels of this book that paying attention to the nitty gritty was only going to lead to disappointment. These are all great points.





Yeah, that was an odd reference. I guess the 1938 Errol Flynn film was still the cultural zeitgeist, so the term "Robin Hood" may have had a looser equation with heroism at the time. After all, they used it on Robin in Detective Comics #38 this very same year.







I'm considering maybe returning to the title later on to tackle an issue later in the run, when the book has hit its stride, but certainly not yet. We all deserve a break after that one!

Ready for our next assignment?





I've never read an MLJ superhero comic in my life. I chose this one because Madam Satan looked darn interesting as a character concept.

Right off the bat, I just wanna mention that I've always thought that the Shield had a pretty lousy superhero costumes.
The overabundance of red detracts from the "American-ness" of the look. The color balance feels all wrong with this red-dominant distribution. Maybe it's just me, but I perceive red as the least significant color in the flag, whether it does or does not happen to have the least actual area (I suspect there is actually less blue, but it seems like more).
Stripes have almost never been effective in a superhero costume. Recall how Timely's grim Destroyer looked like a clown from the waist down, and how many fans found Red Tornado's outfit laughable--although at least Reddy could spend all his action time as a whirlwind below the belt. And Stripesy's terrible look was not only due to Hal Sharp's primitive and amateurish artistic capabilities. Simon and Kirby made it work on Captain America, but they cleverly limited the stripes to the front of the abdomen, where they accentuated the muscular form. Irv Novick's Shield design is conceptually clever--the torso as a shield is a promising design idea--but in practice, it made the character too often look bulky (especially in the 1960's when Paul Reinman drew it), and having those stripes go all the way into the briefs sends off an uncomfortable vibe.

You would think that there should be more striped costumes. Stripes are a very slimming design for the hero on the go! And that dag blamed Seven Soldiers of Victory Stripesy had to be arbitrary just had to go the opposite direction!

Thoughts on Danny in Wonderland: The Menace of Playland

Perhaps inspired by the 1939 film version of Wizard of Oz, as well as well as Windsor McCay's Little Nemo, this feature is obsessed with the dark side of children's wild imaginations, though it seems more grounded in the real-world, occurring right on the urban streets. It's hokey, sure, but perhaps seemingly moreso because little kids are disturbingly non-innocent these days. Smart phones, chrome books, and TV have robbed them of some of their wild sense of wonder. I therefore find a work like this one admirable in its efforts. I wish I could dream like that kind of innocent child again, even when the dreams turn dark. Because there's always a mermaid queen or two lying around, waiting to gift you a seahorse.




As for the plot, c'mon! How many folks reading this hadn't seen Disney's Pinocchio a year earler?



So the plot is blatant theft, but I still respect the premise and would enjoy seeing more of these, provided they're a tad more original in their ideas.