Lance Hale:
I’m going to bend my own rules a bit for a quick look at an odd Golden Age feature I stumbled across. Lance Hale never had his own series, he did backup duty in Gleason’s SILVER STREAK COMICS #2-6 and #8-13. He teamed up with Gleason’s most popular superhero, Daredevil, in the very special DAREDEVIL COMICS #1, each chapter of which guest-starred one of the publisher’s other characters.
What makes Lance Hale interesting is that it
didn’t start out as a jungle comic. I couldn’t resist reading through all of Lance’s appearances, so this time around, I’m going to briefly touch on all of his appearances, so we can get a taste of the character’s evolution.
“Jungle Spaceship” Silver Streak #2, January 1940
Read this at comicbookplus.comIt quickly becomes obvious that Lance Hale’s creator—the only credit is for the artist, John Hampton--is looking to Flash Gordon for inspiration. At first, this appears to be a standard jungle adventurer comic, as Lance and his companions are attacked by natives and marched away. The occasional Spanish words spoken by the natives suggest this is some South American jungle. The men are taken before another white man, Dr. Grantland Grey, who promises great adventure, something so fantastic that he felt he had to capture someone to get them to listen. Lance volunteers, and his companions leave.
First on the agenda is a look at the scientist’s space ship: like Dr. Zarkoff to Lance’s Flash Gordon, the professor is proposing Lance accompany him into space. Before all that, though, Lance is to receive a treatment to increase his power via an armband injecting a strange formula, while Lance is simultaneously lifting 500 pounds. With the obvious reference aid of a “physical culture” magazine, Hampton spends three pages depicting Lance’s glorious transformation into a super-man:
Lance finishes his workout by killing a leopard, and then hops into the pilot’s seat as he and the professor head to space!
“Invasion of the Spirit Men” Silver Streak #3 (March 1940)
Read this at comicbookplus.comLance and Grey’s expedition is already in trouble as the second installment begins: they’ve exceeded the speed of light and arrive in “spirit-land”. The spiritmen are animal-headed beings with no souls or bodies, “just below mankind in the cycle of evolution. For this reason, they are jealous of human beings, envying them their kingdom of the Earth—longing to supplant them.”
Their King, Loti, appears to be human, and he rescues the captives from death at the hands of his subjects, but gets a crack on the face by the super-powered Lance when Loti insults them. I just love this plan of his: “When I’ve conquered the earth, I mean to make your daughter my queen! You have a daughter, Dr. Grey?” You know, I’ve really been hoping an earth man would land here and I could then conquer earth and marry his daughter, so I just want to be sure about that before I waste any more time with you…
The indignant Grey headbutts Loti, who drops the crystal ball that was maintaining the illusion of a human head; his actual head is that of a vulture.
In the dungeon, Lance’s enhanced powers allow him to see the invisible Loti spying on them, and learns that Loti’s invasion will begin in 30 minutes. I’m sure it all made sense to the writer, but evidently these are all just spirit forms with the illusion of substance, so Lance uses his own will to dematerialize their chains, and they escape to their ship and head home to Capetown, South Africa.
The spiritmen are hot on their tails, though, and they are coming for the professor’s daughter, Myra! Lance fights them off while Professor Grey and Myra…umm…focus their will power on a polished silver bowl, causing them to fade away:
The tale concludes with an officer arriving to announce that the world is being invaded by beast men! “Can Lance Hale stop them? Can Dr. Grey invent something to liberate humanity from this terrible threat?” The continuation of this story is to be found in the next issue…
“The Lizard Men” Silver Streak #4 (May 1940)
Read this at comicbookplus.com…or maybe not.
Readers instead got a sudden reboot of the feature. Lance has inherited his uncle’s fortune, and is seeking it in the caves of Rhodesia. He finds the treasure, but is captured by local cavemen. Their queen, Aldia, is not a brute like them, but a beauty, and she recognizes Lance, having known his uncle.
Lance has a hard time believing that, since she still appears young, but she explains that the immortal flame keeps her young—and she wants to give its treatment to Lance! They’ve got to act quick, because the Lizard Men are about to attack, and they may destroy the flame!
While this seems like a complete reboot, Lance is still the kind of guy who’s up for undergoing some radical body transformation, and walks through the flame without hesitation:
Lance leads the cavemen and defeats the Lizard Men, and rescues Aldia before the Lizard Men’s leader could carry her off to become his wife:
Aldia tries to force Lance to remain and become her king, but he refuses, and escapes with his uncle’s treasure.
I guess Lance Hale is a fantasy adventure comic now.
Untitled story Silver Streak #5 (June 1940)
Read this at comicbookplus.comOn a ship to America, thugs plot to steal Lance’s chest of treasure because it includes the Gem of Evil. They steal the chest and escape in a boat, with Lance returning to the ship followed by a shark. He kills the shark, takes a speed boat in pursuit, but the thugs have a small cannon and sink his boat. Lance escapes into the water, and thugs report to their leader, the cruel but lovely Lurida. She learned of the Gem of Evil in Africa, and she uses it to summon the Shadow Monster, which she unleashes on America. It sinks a ship (for insurance purposes), robs banks (killing the cashiers) and slaughters policemen.
Lance begins trailing the beast through the alleys. Lurida’s thugs catch him and bring him in, but Lance turns the tables and kills them. He then is taken into the crushing grip of the Shadow Monster, but Lurida stops the creature. Lurida proposes uniting, Lance refuses, and he ends up hanging by his feet over a fire. He snaps out of his bonds as Lurida is ordering the Shadow Monster to kill her no-longer-needed henchmen. Lance stops her and destroys the gem with a gunshot, then takes care of the now-powerless Shadow Monster, smashing him (to bits!) against a wall. Lurida dives suicidally into the flames. “Her pride wouldn’t allow her to face defeat. But it’s just as well!” Lance coldly states, as he “thinks only of new adventures!”
This one reminded me of the early Bernard Baily Spectre stories. The Shadow Monster is much like Baily’s supernatural menaces: a little too silly looking to be taken seriously. The Gem of Evil sounds just like the kind of gimmick you’d find in a Spectre story. And Lance is just as willing to deal out deadly punishment as Jim Corrigan was:
Untitled story Silver Streak #6 (September, 1940)
Read this at comicbookplus.comThe art style changes dramatically to a bold, clear look, tentatively attributed by the GCD to John Hampton and/or Mac Raboy. More importantly, the series suddenly becomes a jungle comic. The introductory caption acknowledges the previous issue’s monster battle in the city, then tells us that Lance has wandered into the jungles of deep Africa. Like any good jungle hero, he’s now clad only in a leopard-skin loin cloth and carrying a stone-tipped spear as a weapon.
Lance comes to the rescue of a young white boy threatened by a hungry lion. He slays the beast and gets to know young Jackie, who is hungry from being lost for days in the jungle.
An elephant, with poisoned spears imbedded in her hide, crashes into the area. Lance takes to the trees and drops down, putting the pachyderm to pasture with a piercing poke in the posterior of the pate. “It’s all for the best, poor beast.”
Next, Jackie finds the expired elephant’s baby, which they adopt as a pet—and as a means of comfortable transportation for the lad, who couldn’t be expected to keep up with the pace of a mighty man of the jungle like Lance.
Three days later, Lance and Jackie are cooking lunch, when Jackie brings forth a rifle he found in a nearby cabin. Lance knows: “Guns—cabins! That means white people! Where there are whites in the jungle, there is always trouble!” Um, OK, Lance, being white yourself, I guess you’d know…
He’s right, of course: the white “Brad Hender and his renegades” ambush and fire upon a line of natives carrying ivory tusks. Lance rallies the Africans, and spears fly: “The thieving murderers, they deserve to die.”
Lance’s blood thirst evidently fades after a few kills, and he calls off the combat with a generous “Let them go, they’ve learned a lesson!”
The warriors depart with their ivory, after their grateful chief vows to assist Lance in any danger. Brad and the survivors, meanwhile, are plotting their revenge against “that white guy”, and club him from behind as he heads back to his young charge Jackie. Lance awakens to find himself facing execution at the end of Brad’s gun barrel, when Jackie and the baby elephant Yamba crash through the cabin walls. Together, they go on the offense, and “even Jackie fights like a man of the jungles.”
Brad gets his head bashed in and dies, and his pals flee for their lives, spared by Lance and Jacky and Yamba.
Well, they’re at least trying to maintain continuity with the previous incarnation, but it seems they’ve decided to make this a straight jungle hero comic, giving him a boy sidekick, and ignoring all the super-powered stuff. For a jungle comic, though, this is not very impressive stuff. It seems padded, boring, and crude. No more wild ideas like Gems of Evil and spiritmen, but it
is maintaining that distasteful, casual attitude toward death:
It’s almost funny how quickly Lance can shift from murderous attacks to casual dismissal, with two instances in this one story of killing off a few opponents and letting the others go.
Untitled story Silver Streak #8 (March 1941)
Read this at comicbookplus.comLance returns after a one-issue absence, and the feature has been overhauled once again. Despite the previous installment’s final panel promise, Jackie is gone without any mention. I’ll pretend that the missing installment was censored because Jackie got eaten by a lion or trampled by an elephant, teaching Lance not to casually adopt orphans into the life of jungle adventure.
So Fred Guardineer, creator of Zatara, has taken over the Lance Hale feature, and now Lance has a “costume”: a one-shoulder leopard-skin vest, red trunks, green tights, and yellow lace-up sandals. Guardineer attempts, in the introductory caption, to establish a back-story that accommodates at least part of what has gone before, explaining that Lance has “adapted himself to life in the African jungle” after “leaving civilization many months ago.” He’s also conquered the spear and bow and arrow, and learned the secrets of the natives and animals.
In this installment, Lance helps a girl, Ruth, reunite with her father and brother, who were captured by savages while exploring the M’Bongo River. Lance saves the men from this cannibal tribe by shooting their leader dead—on model behavior for Lance! Lance then generously leads them to a hidden treasure with a boat trip into an underground cavern, fighting off crocodiles to lead them to the gold:
It’s a trivial story, but I like Guardineer’s work. His neat style makes this go down easy, even if there’s not much there to generate interest.
“Captives of the Pygmies” Silver Streak #9 (April 1941)
Read this at comicbookplus.comIn this one, Lance rescues a downed pilot, and the both of them are captured by savage pygmies. Fred Guardineer employs one of his favorite gimmicks to render the pygmies’ language:
Lance and his new pal set fire to the pygmies’ tree-house village, slaughtering them a-plenty with bullet and arrow and spear. Finally, they have to kill a lion to make it to the train, where the pilot can return to civilization. Lance tells the fellow “If I ever get tired of the jungle I’ll look you up!”
No, I’m beginning to think Lance would miss all the killing he gets to do in the jungle…
“Prisoner on a U-Boat” Silver Streak #10 (May 1941)
Read this at comicbookplus.comThis one takes us out of the jungle for a fishing trip off the west coast of Africa, where Lance is captured and taken aboard a German U-Boat. When the American Navy gets a bead on the surfacing submarine, they pierce its hull and Lance and the crew are faced with drowning. Lance makes it out with the unlikely help of a bucket over his head:
After evading an octopus by siccing a shark on it, Lance is rescued by the Navy and deposited again on the shores of Africa, in “the shade of the jungle with the animals he loves.”
Untitled story Silver Streak #11 (June 1941)
Read this at comicbookplus.comLance allows a screaming woman to be taken by savages from a geological expedition so that he can, hopefully, trail them and locate the other people that have been kidnapped lately. Dubious reasoning for a hero, given that the captive endures several days of terror as she’s carried off to the “Lost Temple of Death”!
The girl is to be sacrificed to the “Great One”, and Lance rescues her—and kills one of her captors—just before the Great One emerges: a gigantic, golden rat! I gotta give Fred some credit here, giant jungle rats haven’t exactly been overdone in the genre!
Lance struggles, unable to kill the rat, and the girl—Nellie--picks up one of the savages’ stone axes to assist with the final blow. Conveniently, this is the very temple that the “geological” expedition was here to explore, so Lance escorts her backward on the trail, hoping to meet her friends heading that way.
On the way, Lance has to save Nellie from a giant python and a panther (neither of which is drawn very convincingly; Guardineer continues to be shaky on wildlife). They meet up with the expedition, which almost fires on Lance, thinking he was the kidnapper, but Nellie clears up the matter of the rescue, and Lance assures them that it’s now safe to enter the temple. Finally, we get a one-panel preview of the next episode.
Well, if Fred Guardineer is scripting these, as the GCD contends, he’s not exactly the greatest plotter, but I admit to being charmed by these minimalist, underdeveloped adventures. Even at a short 5 pages, this is padded with a page and a half of python peril, and even with the less-than-competent biological authenticity, the pages are fun to look at and easy to read.
“The Forbidden Valley of Ka-Zor” Silver Streak #12 (July 1941)
Read this at comicbookplus.comThe feature burns through the standard jungle comics tropes with Lance finding a valley populated by living dinosaurs. He also has to deal with the savage ape-men of Ka-Zor. Dinosaurs are not one of Guardineer’s artistic strengths, either:
Lance makes friends with the ape men and returns to his own jungle.
“Fighting Hitler & his Jungle Hordes” Daredevil Battles Hitler (Daredevil Comics) #1 (July 1941)
Read this at comicbookplus.comDespite being on the chopping block, Lance Hale got the biggest level of exposure Gleason could have provided by including him in their “Daredevil Battles Hitler” blockbuster, which comprised the first issue of the comic starring their breakout hit character. Lance doesn’t make the cover, which depicts Daredevil with his other co-stars of the issue, the regular features in SILVER STREAK COMICS, including Pirate Prince, Dickie Dean Boy Inventor, Silver Streak, and The Claw. There just wasn’t room for everybody; Cloud Curtis, an aviator character who also got a chapter, also didn’t appear.
The setup has Daredevil roaming the world to foil Hitler’s plans, teaming up with other Lev Gleason characters in each chapter. The artist of Lance’s chapter is unidentified.
Daredevil meets Lance, with whom he seems to be familiar, in the African jungle, where Hitler himself has set up a headquarters from which to conquer Africa. Lance gets to keep watch while Daredevil barges in to punch Hitler in the gut, but DD can’t overcome the entire force of Nazi soldiers, and ends up in a firing squad. It’s Lance to the rescue, riding in on a charging elephant!
Lance and Daredevil kill more Nazis, with DD stealing Lance’s thunder by borrowing his bow and arrow and firing, from the back of the elephant, at bombs in Hitler’s camp, just as the genocidal monster pilots his own plane out of there, never to set foot in Lance Hale’s jungle again.
Well, it’s only fair that DD get the lion’s share of attention here, but it’s a pretty lame showing for Lance, who is second banana for every panel. He shouldn’t take it too personally, as even the headliner Silver Streak has little to contribute to his chapter. In an ominous sign, though, the comic’s two-page spread promoting SILVER STREAK COMICS shows Daredevil, Silver Streak, Captain Battle, Cloud Curtis, Pirate Prince, Dickie Dean and Presto Martin. Battle and Presto didn’t even get a chapter in this DAREDEVIL. Indeed, the next issue of SSC would be Lance’s final bow.
“The Mad Elephant” Silver Streak #13 (August 1941)
Read this at comicbookplus.comIn his final appearance, Lance helps a native village deal with a maddened elephant tearing up the village. The elephant has been wounded by hunters, but not finished off. It chases Nada, the chief’s daughter, up a tree, and Lance must kill the behemoth to save her. To spice up the final page, he also has to kill a hyena threatening the girl’s brother:
The story closes with a preview of the next installment, in which Lance will battle a man-eating crocodile of the Congo. But that adventure would go untold. Lance Hale would not appear in any more issues of SILVER STREAK COMICS, or anything else.
As you might have guessed from my plowing through every installment, Lance Hale is a
Jungle Gem to me. In spite of its many weaknesses, it's an appealing oddity, exactly the kind of wonky seat-of-your-pants feature I dig most from the Golden Age.