NOTES - APRIL 2025

Aliens:

The adventures of Mars Mason, interplanetary mailman, are rife with amazing alien designs thanks to creator Munson Paddock, but the Tough-Tails of Planet Greentrees and their allies the top-hatted Spear-Men are possibly my favourite aliens that I've seen in a couple of years. (Speed Comics 009, 1940) 

The Speed Comics 010 Mars Mason adventure again features some more top-notch alien designs, including both the Mercurian leader with his enormous ears and his subjects with their amazing hats. The Uranian Monster-Men are okay, but the real star of that second set of panels is Mars Mason's amazing radiator suit that seems to help him weather both the cold of Uranus and the heat of Mercury with equal aplomb.

Drawn Without Reference:

A nice fuzzy spider created to menace Shock Gibson. (Speed Comics 010, 1940) 

Good Henchmen:

It's not really germane to the story, but I would like to highlight the emotional journey that this henchman goes through over the course of a scheme by upcoming Minor Super-Villain Comrade Ratski. midway through a scheme to release giant arthropods on an unsuspecting populace is a heckuva time to confront your dislike of bugs. (Speed Comics 010, 1940)

Honours:

Ted Parrish, aka the mystery man known as the Man With 1000 Faces, wins the Academy Award for his performance in a film called Thundering Hoofs. We must make some assumptions - that Thundering Hoofs was completed and released in 1940, for example - but I think that Parrish might just have gotten his Oscar at the expense of Jimmy Stewart's win for The Philadelphia Story. (Speed Comics 010, 1940)

Mars Mason, Interplanetary Mailman, has his likeness on the Mercury Mail five-something stamp. (Speed Comics 011, 1940)

NOTES - JANUARY 2025

Heaven help me, I looked forward to the 1950s issues of Planet Comics to see what the Gale Allen feature ended up like and boy oh boy do I regret it. It's one thing to only read comics from 1940, but seeing the improvements to the form after a decade or so makes it hard to go back. But I must soldier on!

Happy New Year!

Infographics:

A conceptual drawing of a spaceship and some speculative facts about space travel c.1940 (Planet Comics 009, 1940)

Ephemera:

This is a bit out of order seeing as I have a two week or so buffer of posts most of the time and I write the Notes bits as they occur to me, but a real theme that has emerged as I've read the 1940 issues of Planet Comics has been that Fiction house was just repurposing whole stories left and right, including ones that were written and drawn for characters from other comic book companies. To be clear, I don't think that this was a shady business practice or anything, just that the industry was still new and that almost every book was an anthology title that features were being shuffled in and out of constantly - it's no wonder that artists were left with finished stories that were no longer wanted from time to time - why not just slap a new name on the hero and publish it?

With that in mind, I am 100% confident in saying that this first Crash Parker story started life as a Cyclone story over at Quality Comics - the setup of colonizing a new planet after a space race and even the look of the evil Martian king are dead giveaways. Good news for fans of Cyclone, the character who appeared in 4 comics in 1940, I guess. (Planet Comics 009, 1940)

Honours:

American pilot Ted O'Neil is given an unspecified medal for bringing down an Axis superweapon. (Prize Comics 004, 1940)

Names:

The third case tackled by Fox Features mid tier hero the Eagle is catching a gang of pickpockets, and that gang's lead is named Ben Dread, which I think is unnecessarily cool. Save the good names for more interesting criminals, I say. (Science Comics 003, 1940) 

Drawn Without Reference:

This might just be the bold new look the narwhal have been looking for. (Science Comics 008, 1940)

NOTES - DECEMBER 2024

Drawn Without Reference: 

The Rocket and the Queen of Diamonds find themselves facing a very off-model spider in the lad of the Batmen. (Pep Comics 003, 1940)

Cops Shooting at Fleeing Suspects:

I was briefly tempted to give the cops of the MLJ universe a pass on shooting at the Comet because he did after all kill a bunch of them while mind controlled but then I remembered that a) that's still no excuse to gun someone down in the street, and b) it's still bad that they're just blazing away at a flying man in the middle of a large city full of other people. (Pep Comics 004, 1940)

 And they do it again... (Pep Comics 005, 1940)

 And again... (Pep Comics 006, 1940)

... and again (in a crowded state legislature building!) (Pep Comics 008, 1940)

Louisiana cops try to blow away Naval Academy Midshipman Lee Samson for escaping jail and stealing a police car. (Pep Comics 006, 1940)

Crossovers:

Oft touted as the first super-hero crossover in comics, the Shield shares a total of four panels with the Wizard as they both set out to foil some dastardly Mosconian spies. (Pep Comics 004, 1940)

Less frequently mentioned are the brief encounters between the Wizard and Lee Samson, aka the Midshipman and the Shield and Keith Kornell, aka the West Pointer, two very similar and very dull military academy students from different branches of the military-industrial complex. And they are less interesting, so that makes sense.

The next issue features another appearance by the Wizard, this one less highly touted as it's the second time it happened plus he just shows up to loan the Shield a plane. I personally think that that's remarkable, as Golden Age crossovers tended more toward the one-off. (Pep Comics 005, 1940)

Minutia: 

The Shield briefly pitches pro baseball under the name the Masked Marvel, as part of an investigation into a protection racket targeting players. (Pep Comics 007, 1940)

NOTES - JULY 2024

Cops Shooting Fleeing Suspects: 

The cops send a "shower of bullets" after the Fantom of the Fair as he swings over the densely-populated New York World's Fair. (Amazing Adventure Funnies 001, 1940)

Spider Drawn Without Reference:

Tarantula: a perfect black sphere covered in root structures. (Champion Comics 006, 1940)

Memes of Yore: COWARD!:

The "cowardly and superstitious lot" line that Batman is quoted as saying was not a one-off thing but it was in fact a widely-promoted idea of the time, that criminals were inherent cowards (there was also a frequent emphasis on criminals' gun use being a very cowardly attribute but that fell by the wayside at some point). Crime Does Not Pay was a message hammered into the public consciousness via the Hayes Code and later the Comics Code, and making criminals non-aspirational figures in every way possible was a part of that.

The extrapolation of this into "the more criminal you are the more cowardly you are" in this story is extremely funny, as is the fact that a criminal supposedly meeting his death by electrocution with some stoicism made front page news. Don't worry, it was the old "escape prison by using a death-simulating drug prior to your execution and then have people on the outside wake you up later" gag. Dr Miracle recaptures Nickie Norton in short order and his actual death was without dignity. (Champ Comics 011, 1940)

Honours:

The Flying Trio receive the Sylvanian Order of the Cross and Palms (Crash Comics Adventures 003, 1940)

NOTES - MARCH 2024

The Foot Test For Guns:

I sincerely can't believe we've found another person trying the Foot Test For Guns, the worst of all ways to see if a gun is working. (Big Shot Comics 004, 1940)

Kids Playing Super-Heroes:

Jibby Jones is a pretty weak sauce comic strip (seen here in comic book reprint, natch) but dang if I'm not intrigued by this Moon Man character. (Big Shot Comics 005, 1940)

Honours:

Jeff Cardiff, Spy-Chief saves Washington DC from being exploded by unspecified foreigners and is rewarded with the very official-sounding honour of "Greatest Espionage Achievement of the Year" by FDR himself! And is that J Edgar Hoover in the background? Probably! (Big Shot Comics 006, 1940)

Who is Lazy Ray?:

I've been reading Big Shot Comics from the Columbia Comic Corporation for the last week or so and I believe that I've spotted an in-joke. But who is the "Lazy Ray" referenced in the two panels? Both Spy-Chief (above) and the Face (below) are Mart Bailey joints, so it could be a personal joke of his or it could be a joke among the contributors of this magazine as a whole (like the seeming industry-wide joke of putting Gil Fox's name in as a reference at every opportunity - wish I'd though to screenshot those as I came across them). The only Ray associated with Big Shot that I can find is Ray McGill, who seems to have mainly done gag panels. Who can say but I shall be watching out for Lazy Ray going forward.

MORE LAZY RAY SIGHTINGS:

"the Face" (Big Shot Comics 011, 1941)

"the Face" (Big Shot 018, 1941)

Nova Scotia:

It's not like it matters to the plot but the action of this Marvelo story takes place largely on a beach on Cape Breton. (Big Shot Comics 013, 1941)

the Fate of Mu:

A fairly straightforward account of a Pacific continent sinking, with the fun added detail that it's because of Earth's lost second moon exploding. It's never actually called Mu and in fact it's Atlantis that gets namechecked, but a close reading of the relevant text suggests that the two continents merely sank at the same time, so Atlantis was also presumably moonstruck.

Really fond of these little bug-eyed guys, by the way. (Big Shot Comics 014, 1941)

Weed Propaganda:

Santy Claus:

To the extent that the Columbia Comic Corporation has a shared universe, Santa Clause is confirmed real in it. (Big Shot Comics 020, 1941)

Drawn Without Reference:

(Blackstone Super-Magic 001, 1941)

NOTES - DECEMBER 2023

Weaknesses: 

A very specific weakness for the Spectre: a once-in-a-hundred-million-year alignment of constellations that surely will never happen again. (More Fun Comics 071, 1941)

Misc:

This is my first encounter with Golden Age Johnny Quick so I'm not sure if the slow-down formula that he uses in the third panel above is a regular thing or a one-off but it sure has been left by the wayside. (More Fun Comics 071, 1941)

EDIT: He does it again in More Fun Comics 072! 

Memes of Yore - Keep 'em Flying!

Johnny Quick (More Fun Comics 073, 1941)

Green Arrow and Speedy (More Fun Comics 074, 1941)

Drawn without reference:

A wonderful 11-legged spider! (More Fun Comics 073, 1941)

Origins:

Poor ol' Earth-Two Aquaman. Nobody even remembers that he exists half the time, plus he got eliminated in the Crisis. Anyway, here's his origin: his dad found Atlantis and trained his son to breathe water (also a cheeky Fate of Atlantis - it sank and now Aquaman lives there). (More Fun Comics 073, 1941)

Great Folk:

I had completely forgotten about this story, but the old man who hoots and hollers and calls for detective Russell Granville until he's on the case is the spectacular character find of 1939. Really, really great way to build up the detective before his appearance and I'm a bit sad that this is the only Russell Granville story because that old man needs more panel time. (Keen Detective Funnies v2 011, 1939)