Fawcett/Quality 1941 Week--The Bitter Dregs

OK, not really bitter dregs. But let's wrap up our sojourn in 1941 by looking at a few interesting things I wasn't able to get to in previous posts.

From Wow Comics #2:

**Wealthy playboys had really strange ideas in the 30s and 40s. Alan Lanier, inspired by the Hunchback Of Notre Dame, decided to put on a hunchback costume and fight crime. Apparently, this sent the underworld "into spasms of fear and trepidation."

From Smash Comics #24:

**Among his other powers, The Ray could fly...so why is he always running everywhere?

**I know The Purple Trio was just yet another non-powered group of friends who went about solving crimes--hey, why not--but...

...when you get a team of a strong man, a ventriloquist and a midget, you have to take notice. Plus, they kind of remind me of a Golden Age version of The Enforcers.

**An awful lot of policeman also put on costumes back in the day. I guess they didn't have a lot of faith in their own system. Rookie cop Chuck Lane, however, decides to dress a little more gaudily than most:

Yes, crooks will be scared of that--just look:

If a caption says it, it must be true!!

Like many of his Quality compatriots, the Jester got a couple of cameos in All-Star Squadron, and name-checked in an issue of Starman.

Sadly, like too many other Golden Age Heroes, he was turned into a homicidal madman by modern writers: in the most recent run of Freedom Fighters, Palmiotti and Gray reveal that Lane went on to become head of the "uber-patriotic" terrorist group the Arcadians who kidnapped the Vice-President and took out a team of federal agents with a suicide bomb. Good on you, Palmiotti and Gray.

**The Golden Age made for some very...odd...racial situations, none odder than the Scarlet Seal. Former actor and current police lab tech (see!! cops again!!) Barry Moore decided that the best way to fight crime was to dress up as a Fu Manchu, Yellow Peril-type villain, the Scarlet Seal.

Yeah, it was even odder than it sounds, as something of a Clark/Lois/Superman triangle developed between Moore, his girlfriend, and the Scarlet Seal:

This issue was the Seal's last story, and the girlfriend figured out the ruse. So, brace yourself for the most uncomfortable word balloon of the week:

**Last up was the cover star of Smash Comics, Bozo The Robot:

He was a robot. He was named Bozo. He fights crime. DC has done nothing with the concept in the past 70 years. There is no justice.

From Feature Comics #46:

**Doll Man was the cover feature of Feature Comics. Doll Man--Ant-Man without the interesting part of the powers!!

**Samar was, of course, yet another Tarzan clone. And I know you all have dirty minds, but...

...those two are fighting there, no matter what that pose may look like. Really. Fighting.

**From the Bruce Blackburn, Counterspy strip, we see that Nazi spies will use everything--literally everything--to bring down America:

**Then things get weird:

In 1777, an unnamed little girl died while trying to deliver threads from the first American flag to her uncle, Sam (no relation?). Her ghost was unleashed in 1941, and the entity (?) became USA, The Spirit Of Old Glory, the living embodiment of the US flag!!

Really.

How does she know when there's trouble?

As...odd...as the concept is, this girl/ghost/living flag can kick ass:

**Now, presenting, the BEST evil villain plot ever:

Freaking. Brilliant.

**In Bulletman #1, we learn that Bulletgirl's dad is pretty damn dense:

**Finally, this was a DC title, but I just have to comment:

Not only is More Fun Comics a great title for a comic, and DC should revive it immediately; but each issue featured Doctor Fate and the Spectre, fighting demons and extracting vengeance upon murderers--so that definition of More Fun pretty much fits in what 21st century DC thinks fun is...

1941 Notes--Text Pieces

If you read enough pre-Silver Age comic books, you're going to see these:

Ah, the text pieces. Stuck right in the middle of all the pretty pictures and colors, just sitting there, begging not to be read.

What was up with those?

Well, in order to qualify for cheaper postal rates, any magazine (comics included) had to include at least 2 pages of non-advertising typeset text. Why? Ask Ben Franklin!

I have no idea how many comics were actually mailed back in 1941, or how much of a difference those postal rates would have made. But obviously, the answer is pretty substantial, because every publisher did them, without fail.

Sometimes the actually involved characters from the comic...just as often not, though. If you were lucky, the piece would be in the same genre as the comic (although in 1941, when most everything was an anthology, that mattered less).

Who wrote them? Fawcett basically had one guy in charge of theirs--you can see that both of the above were authored by "Larac (or La Rac) Semrof." which is just Carl Formes spelled backwards with an extra A thrown in.

It's hard to tell because of all the pen names, but other companies seemingly made anyone sitting around the office write some. That was Stan Lee's first published work--the text piece in Captain America Comics #3, starring Cap himself!

As you can imagine, these obligatory pieces often weren't good--turgid prose at best, unreadable at worst (Still better than Bendis' Oral History of the Avengers, though...). Frankly, even I rarely bother to read them, and I read EVERYTHING in a comic book.

Maybe that's a good project for someone--gather and publish an archive of the best of the text pieces. That could be interesting, and surely most of them are public domain by now.

By the Silver Age, the companies realized that they didn't have to pay writers to do this--letters pages and Bullpen Bulletins were enough to satisfy the post office. Fans would give them their text requirements--for free!! And so, farewell to the text pieces.

Of course, by running letters columns, the comic companies created the delusion amongst fans that their opinion mattered, and thus was created the fan entitlement that has destroyed the comic industry...or so some would have you believe...

Quality 1941 Week--Crack Comics #14 (Part 2)!!

Woo ha, we're back, and it's time for the back half of Crack Comics #14 here at Fawcett 1941 Week. But, can you bear the terror that is:

Ah, the Spider. Yet another bowman. Seriously, there were what, 137 of those in the Golden Age?

Tom Hallaway was just a guy who decided to fight crime, and decided to use arrows to do it. Seriously, that's his entire origin.

So why did he call himself the Spider? Good question, that nobody seems to have an answer for.

I should note that I'm really keen on Paul Gustavson's layouts, particularly on this page, where Spider punches a bad go so hard that it overflows into 6 other panels:

And in closeup:

Spider was also one of the first comic archers to use trick arrows and gimmicked arrowheads:

Spider made a few token appearances in Roy Thomas' WWII books. Post-Crisis, James Robinson and Geoff Johns turned him into a traitorous, murderous bad guy--he was only pretending to be a hero to eliminate the competition. Good on you, guys. His son now carries on the villainous tradition.

Next, we have another set of newspaper strip reprints, namely Ned Bryant:

Then we have the not-too-well-dressed Red Torpedo:

Jim Lockhart invented a ship that could travel in and under the water, as well as fly:

He survived to modern day, and was used as a supporting character in the Aquaman: Sword Of Atlantis series. Geoff Johns hasn't slaughtered him or turned him into a villain yet...

Next:

Despite the word "Legion" in the name, this was essentially another Flash Gordon series, with one brave Legionnaire (Rock Braddon) teaming up with Professor Wadsworth and his hot daughter after several other anonymous Legionnaires die from the monster of the month. This month:

Of course, it's an alien plot:

And there's a regular Rube Goldberg feature--seriously!! From Rube himself!! Click below to embiggen and see the best way to break in a new pair of shoes:

Finally, we have a pretty neat bit of history buried way in the back:

The Clock was the first--the very first--original costumed crime fighter to appear in a comic book, back in 1936!! He's a bit closer to pulps in style and tone, closer at times to the Shadow than Batman...but everyone who put on a mask or costume and went out to beat up crooks followed in this guy's footsteps. To bad he's been largely forgotten today.

They never dwelled much on his private life, grudging acknowledging on occasion that he had a secret identity as Brian O'Brien, rich dude and former district attorney. He was a master of disguise, he had lots of cool gadgets, and he was a right bastard who showed no mercy to crooks.

This issue, he has a particular target:

A cop-killer, and he's out on bail??? No wonder Clock is peeved.

Anyway, The Clock has the best mask EVER:

As I said, he doesn't believe in coddling criminals:

And when photographers try to get a photo of him, well, he doesn't care all that much for the press, either:

Still, for some reason, the press loves him, though:

And when a gang boss tries to stop his reign of terror by kidnapping innocent civilians, The Clock is interested in only one thing:

And slap Scrag (and his thugs) he does. For someone without superpowers, he sure punches hard:

The Clock was mentioned in a couple of Starman stories. In 1992, Malibu lunched The Protectors, using many public domain characters from Centaur Comics (which is where The Clock debuted before Quality absorbed their line). In the Malibu universe, he was described as the very first costumed hero, but he joined the Army, went into politics...and became President Of The USA!!!

And that's Crack Comics #14. As you've no doubt noticed, it's a little more hodgepodgy than some of the other Quality mags, with some "old school" traits of reprinting newspaper comic strips, Rube Goldberg stuff, and keeping some older concepts like The Clock running.

Tune in tomorrow, when we conclude our trip to 1941 (I hope!)