MEDIA IN COMICS 004

It's an all-movies episode of Media in Comics!

Movies:

London Strikes Back - Hard! is the film follow-up to London Can Take It, with both featuring an actor playing costumed vigilante London and the narration of Marc Holmes, London's secret identity. As a bonus, please note the wild nasal apparatus that Imperial Studios required to put a toothbrush mustache on the actor playing Hitler. (Daredevil Comics 005, 1941)

We don't too much of the action of Wild Mesa as it is filmed on the ranch of cowboy hero Bull's-Eye Bill, as the issues in question are much more concerned with the interpersonal conflict between Bill and film star Tex O'Conner. Seems to be a regular-ass Western. (Target Comics v1 009, 1940)

And now for some more Fantastic Feature Films content, as discussed in the last Media in Comics round-up: 

Musical genius Gorevski, driven mad by a progressive paralysis in his right arm and the perceived infidelity of his wife, turns his strange musical abilities to crime in The Music Monster. (Target Comics v1 004, 1941)

Big city gangsters steal a rain-making machine and get mixed up in backwoods hijinks in the execrable hillbilly comedy Ezekiel's Ark. (Target Comics v1 005, 1941) 

The Blue Zombie, a film about mad science being turned against warmongers, turned up in a minor super-hero round-up a while back. (Target Comics v1 006, 1941)

The House of Horror is kind of a horror movie and kind of a crime movie, about a young couple who stumble into a gang hideout while visiting a relative and get fake haunted. (Target Comics v1 007, 1941)

In Wedding Present, a gangster tries to go straight for love, only to be dragged back in and ultimately meet his end thanks to his own twisted mind. (Target Comics v1 008, 1941)

Boomerang is the tale of a heroic reporter fighting to clear his lover's father from a political frameup (the boomerang in question being the fact that the source of the smear campaign has his own career ruined). (Target Comics v1 009, 1941)

Sword of Destiny is a very weird horror movie in which an American couple buy a house that once belonged to Mexican war hero General Santa Guerrero, only to find that instead of dying twenty years earlier as everyone had believed he had instead been trapped in the building's basement, eating rats and house painters. The titular sword of destiny is Guerrero's own that had been left hanging over the fireplace and is ultimately used to slay him. (Target Comics v1 010, 1941)

Oddly featured just two issues after the last one, this Boomerang is a story about a man trying to commit the perfect murder and then himself dying when rigor mortis causes his victim to posthumously shoot him back. (Target Comics v1 011, 1941)

IT'S CALLED "NO, AND"

(Target Comics v1 007-008)

The of these two selections is from the end of the Bull's-Eye Bill story in Target Comics v1 007 and the second is from the beginning of the story in 008, and while the artist is clearly different it's a bit hard to tell if the writer has also changed. Anyhow, shout out to whichever member of the team looked at that absolute 100% lead-in to an adventure in an underground prehistoric enclave, said "I don't want to write and/or draw a bunch of cowboy vs dinosaur shit" and had them just walk back out of the cave into a story about Hollywood location scouts instead.

(I haven't read far enough to see if lone African American cast member Happy ever reappears after unceremoniously being left out of the second issue but if he doesn't I'm going to assume that he at least heeded the call to adventure and is off somewhere riding a quetzalcoatlus and having fun instead of punching cows all day)