Feature Funnies #9

Hey, it's my blog to do with what I want -- so sometimes it's not all about Hideouts & Hoodlums.  This page of Joe Palooka I'm just sharing because it's so funny...and maybe I can relate a little...

This, on the other hand, is a bit of a sore subject for me. It's a proven fact that torture does not produce reliable information, yet it always seems to work when Heroes like The Clock want to use it. It's one of those areas, like racism, that is a tough call -- how far are you willing to go to emulate the comic books, even if it encourages non-heroic actions?

This cane with a spring-loaded trick head was mentioned in the Clock entry for Supplement IV: Captains, Magicans, & Incredible Men.

Will Eisner's Hawks of the Seas has been running for awhile now at this point and is starting its second story line, but I've never found an excuse to feature it until now. The new magic item is a Locket of Warning, that plays music whenever the owner is in danger (read: immunity to surprise).

It's often the non-adventurous strips, like Dixie Dugan, that give us the best idea of what life was like in the late 1930s. Note how Dixie's date balks at an 8-course meal for just $3 -- what sounds amazingly inexpensive to us now, wishes for the 50-cent dinner, but then lucks into a hot dog place selling everything for 5 cents each. Now, I'm not sure how many fancy hotels had to sell their in-house restaurants to hot dog vendors back then, but it does seem plausible to me that fancy eateries were going out of business often.

More subtle -- and more interesting -- is the fact that they are walking home from the beach, apparently having to cross the entire town to do so, and that's not even an issue either of them are worried about. The fact that her date can't afford better transportation doesn't even come up as part of the joke. This tells me that a lot more people were just used to walking to get to where they needed to go back then.

This is from Off the Record and, while funny, I think the interesting thing about it is that the girlfriend sitting on his lap in front of the parents is not part of the joke. Was it really socially acceptable in the 1930s to have your girlfriend sit on your lap?

Though lotteries were technically illegal in the 1930s, this "bank night" at the movie theater sounds an awful lot like a lottery...

This page of Mickey Finn seems to confirm a question I had last month about carnival rides in the 1930s. Apparently, an open spin-around ride was a real thing. I wonder how many people got hurt on those!

Lastly, from the back cover, this ad shows how available firecrackers were to anyone, for just $3. Firecrackers are, of course, excellent tools for diversions in any H&H scenario.



(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus)