NOTES - NOVEMBER 2023

Fate of the Wreck of the Athenia

 

Showing tremendous respect for the dead, the Blue Tracer uses the wreck of the Athenia as armour while attacking a Nazi battleship. (Military Comics 005, 1941) 

Honours

Marine pilots "Loops" McCann and "Banks" Barrows are "decorated for valor" after a barroom brawl in a Shanghai nightclub leads to the destruction of a Japanese spy cell (Military Comics 005, 1941)

On Crypto-Fascism: 

As I've said before, the US was officially Not Involved in WWII until the December 1941 Pearl Harbor attack and so a lot of pre-1941 comics feature generically Germanish or Japaneseish spies operating on US soil. Military Comics actually features a fair number of actual Nazis (and even some rare comic book appearances by Italian fascists) by having most of its features take place outside of the US. With issue 5 as an example: the Blckhawks battle Nazis in Oslo; the Sniper does the same in Austria; Shot & Shell vex them in a generic Europe; the Death Patrol liberates Nazi POWs as part of the RAF and the Blue Tracer does the same in the Atlantic.

Loops & Banks, above, are US Marines and as such do not actually battle the Japanese in Shanghai. The most interesting contrast is between Miss America and Yankee Eagle, who both battle Nazi submarines that are preying on US shipping but since the Miss America Nazis are operating out of a New England base and the Yankee Eagle Nazis are based at sea only the latter are actually called Nazis.

Comics in Comics:

Inza Cramer meets a fan (More Fun Comics 063, 1941)

Drawn Without Reference:

I know that paleontology wasn't quite as advanced in 1941 as it is today but that is a wild take on what a pterodactyl looked like (More Fun 067, 1941)

Dynamic Action:

Check out the dynamic action on adventurer Clip Carson! (More Fun Comics 068, 1941)

MINOR SUPER-HERO 042: THE BLUE TRACER

(Military Comics 001-016, 1941-1942)

The Blue Tracer is your standard guy-with-a-super-vehicle hero: "Wild Bill" Dunn, an American engineer serving with the British in Ethiopia, finds himself the only survivor of an ambush by a race of would-be world-conquering superhumans called the M'bujies. He and Anzac Boomerang Jones team up to build the multienvironment supercraft the Blue Tracer and foil the M'bujie plans (by killing them all).

There seems to be a consensus online that the vehicle is the Blue Tracer and Bill Dunn is not but I will not be joining them in that: there is a long tradition of super vehicle pilots sharing a name with their craft and anyone who goes to the trouble of putting together an outfit as ostentatious as Dunn's is deserves to have a code name.

The Blue Tracer itself just might have the distinction of being the ugliest super vehicle I have ever seen - it looks like something that really was kitbashed together out of random WWII vehicles in a homemade workshop. It's so ugly, in fact, that I find it charming. 

I looked up whether it was ever referenced again and evidently one of the Freedom Fighters teams used a cool plane called the Blue Tracer. Booooooo! Bring back the ugly Blue Tracer! The Blue Tracer can't be cool.

Also charming: Boomerang Jones, Bill Dunn's Australian gnome of a sidekick. It is both weird and refreshing to encounter an Australian character in an era before the tropes of the accent were really embedded in the popular consciousness.