Welcome back, friends. While I'm stuck 1941, I've decided to make this
Fawcett 1941 Week, and today we're focused on
Whiz Comics #19.
Earlier today, we took a loving look at the lead
Captain Marvel story...but that still leaves us 52 pages of B (and C, and D) heroes to get through!!
I must apologize first, though, as the art gets increasingly poorly reproduced in the following pages. Sorry...even time travel has its limitations.
Next up:
Golden Arrow.
Now, I've already gone on record as saying that
Golden Arrow has the greatest origin in the history of comic books. Sadly, that didn't always translate into great stories, as the strip often devolved into a simple Western. Still, there are plenty of things worth noting here.
G.A. discovers a trail scout who has been roughed up pretty badly:
It turns out that Western bandits are often wry comedians:
It soon turns out that their master plan is to replace the scout with a coming wagon train and guide them deep into Indian territory, where they'll be killed.
No, that plan doesn't seem to make any sense to
me, either.
Golden Age!!Golden Arrow heads off to the nearest cavalry outpost for help...but it turns out he would have been better off going to
F-Troop for help:
Really--
Worst. Army. Ever.Fortunately, Golden Arrow escapes, and gets to display his archery prowess against the bad guys...
...and, when an Indian tries to burn down the circled wagon train...
And, of course, Golden Arrow's horse finishes it off!
Next up:
Lance O'Casey was a rough and tumble sailor, who traveled around with
Captain Doom (
really) and two monkeys named
Mr. Hogan and
Mabel!!
South of the Antarctic Circle, they discover a
hidden tropical island, complete with famed lost explorer and cannibal hordes:
Of course, they're captured, and of course, the monkeys enable their escape:
Golden Age!!O'Casey does have the distinction of having gone on to make an appearance in modern comic books, as a grizzled old sailor in
Power of Shazam #38 (1998).
Meanwhile:
Yes,
Spy Smasher's brown costume was the
worst ever.
After harrowing adventures last month (including crossing over with Captain Marvel!), doctors have insisted that he take a little vacation. Which, of course, can only mean trouble.
Aunt Harriet??Anyway, it turns out our luxury cruise has been infiltrated by "
saboteurs" of indefinite yet definitely German sounding heritage:
Eve, you see, is daughter of an important American admiral.
Anyhoo, the not-specifically-identified-as-Nazi saboteurs have mastered the art of speechifying to their prisoners:
Spy Smasher smashes them. Pretty boring, actually.
Next: A
space-killing page entertaining feature!
Next up--
Dan Dare!!!No, English folks, not "
your" Dan Dare. This is an a hard-boiled American private detective. This issue, he's out to bust up protection rackets disguising themselves as "
patriotic organizations" pretending to help foreigners against discrimination:
Yeah, what does make you think it's a racket??
That's what we call a
clue...
Dan Dare can punch you
AND insult the health of your internal organs!
Then, as always, we find out it is a forlorn newspaper publisher who is the source of all evil:
At least he wasn't hacking voice mail accounts...
Next?
Dr. Voodoo?? Who the
hell is that??
Ah, a good-old fashioned genre masher-upper. Time travel, pirates, giants, a name like Dr. Voodoo (his real name is
Hal Carey, and the "Dr. Voodoo" moniker was given to him by the savage (and all-Caucasian!)
Blancas tribe of South America, who mistook his Western medicine for magic). We get a cool pirate battle:
Oddly, this story is
entirely told by captions--not a single word or thought balloon...so at points it reads more like an illustrated novel than a comic book:
Still, it is
very comic book in one way, as Voodoo takes out three prates in one fell swoop:
Finally, we have
Ibis the Invincible:
Now, I
should love Ibis a lot more than I do. Basically, he's a
4000 year old mummy with a hot mummy girlfriend and a magic stick who's decided to be a crime fighter.
But he's also the type of character, or rather the type of power, that I absolutely hate. His magic Ibis stick can do
literally anything. All he does is say, "Ibis stick, do XX," and XX is done.
It's pretty difficult to write a story with any dramatic tension, or any interest, when your hero can literally do anything, with basically no rules. Either you have Ibis behave stupidly, or go to great lengths to make him lose his wand--there's no other way to make a story last more than 3 panels.
Well, I exaggerate slightly:
That's the first panel. This is a rarity of 1941, a continued story, as Ibis finished last issue shrunk down to tiny size by a madman with shrinking and growing potions. Ibis rousts him, and lays down a
moral law of the Fawcett universe:
Ibis and
Taia return home via magic...
...and their save a jumper from killing himself (while laying down
another moral law):
It turns out the poor guy has been framed for killing his own brother, the crusading district attorney. So, of course, the court has
no problem with Ibis acting as defense attorney:
Then Ibis pulls a
magical Matlock and summons a surprise witness:
You know, I bet there were some damn interesting Supreme Court cases in the Fawcett universe...and I still want to see a DCU version of
Law & Order...
We finish off with another space filler:
Click to embiggen, so you can see comic books
instructing kids to play with hydrochloric acid and ammonia!! What could
possibly go wrong?!?
64 pages for a dime. No ads (except the inside covers and the back cover). Goofy but fun stories and dangerous home chemical experiments!! Golden Age!!!
Come back tomorrow and we'll look at some more comics from 1941...unless I can get this damned
Wayback Machine fixed!!