Target Comics #3 - pt. 4

As readers of this blog may have noticed, I have an unabashed appreciation for this peculiar little utopian future/boys adventure feature, Calling 2R. The writing is impressive and, on this page, you can see how the art keeps wowing me. Sure, this is a trace job, but it's a very good trace job! I think leaving all the perspective lines in even adds to the piece. 

There is something Steve Ditko-esque about this page, from the cartoonishness of that thrown punch to the didactic dialogue in the Hole. Yet the characters are inverted from how Ditko would later have written them; the individualistic Pretty Boy is sobbing and defeated, while the Captain is buoyed by his faith in the collective.  

It's also interesting that neither of these characters have proper names yet.

Contrasting nicely with the didactic Calling 2R is this more nuanced Tarpe Mills one-shot (part of the Fantastic Feature Films series, as if each one-shot was a movie), where four anarchists are portrayed in a surprisingly sympathetic manner.

In case, like me, you were unfamiliar with bubble dancing, The bubble dance is an erotic dance made famous by Sally Rand in the 1930s. The dancer (sometimes naked) dances with a huge bubble shaped like a balloon or ball placed between her body and the audience to make some interesting poses. It's possible that Tarpe had heard of bubble dancing but never seen one, since she seems to have misunderstood and has her holding the bubble behind her.

There are no heroes in this story. This American couple save the dictator, as if that was a good thing. The baroness, in the end, had the courage and conviction to do what seems to me to be the right thing, but is still thwarted. And the poor chicken gets killed!

That's it for this issue of Target Comics. Come back soon for my next read...

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)