Smash Comics #8 - pt. 4

Today we're picking up where we left off with Invisible Hood, still fighting his way through a modern medieval castle (a villain's favorite real estate!).

Here we see that objects being carried by the Invisible Hood are not themselves invisible.

We also get the first occurrence of the phrase "friendly ghost" in all of comics-dom. Take note, future Harvey Comics employees!

"Why, Kent - what are you doing here? And why are you also soaking wet, like I am? Say...you're not really the Invisible Hood, are you?" - Tom would say if he weren't a comic book character.

Brace yourself, because we have some really racist pages of Paul Gustavson's Flash Fulton to get through now. All you need to know is that Flash has come to the Amazon to find a missing explorer. Lots of people have come down here to search for Roger Hart, but none have succeeded. So maybe Flash can be forgiven for being suspicious when this native turns up as such a convenient guide.

It's bizarre how often South American natives are drawn looking like African natives in some of these early comic book stories. This is an example of what indigenous Amazonians looked like circa 1940.

Now one detail he got right I thought was wrong -- voodoo really is practiced in Brazil. It would be an imported religion, though, not something the indigenous cultures would practice.

Being a comic book, it should be no surprise Flash can speak with the native. The surprise is that Flash knows the native's tongue and the native isn't just speaking in broken English.

Brazil has states,not districts, and there is no Kitawa state in Brazil. "Kitawa" doesn't even look like a South American word and, indeed, the only Kitawa I can find is in Papua New Guinea!

Again, Paul is right on some details; there are/were cannibals in the Amazon.

"Hey, our guide just jumped overboard!"

"You think we should just let him go since he helped us get this far?"

"No, there's a chance he'll betray us. Let's both shoot him in the back!"

Okay, enough of that! I think you can guess that they used sound effects to startle the superstitious natives, ho hum.

Turning now to my second favorite feature, John Law, Scientective! In many ways, John Law is like a second draft of Harry Campbell's earlier character, Dean Denton (featured heavily in my repackaging of Funny Picture Stories, on sale now!). Just like how Dean had to figure out who his nemesis, The Conqueror, was, John is narrowing down which of 13 suspects is The Avenger.

And, along the way, we get some science lessons, like how to leave threatening messages on other people's windows.

Sometimes the science is a little shaky for a science-based hero. I mean, compared to the average golden age comic book story, this still reads like an issue of Scientific American. But I can't figure out how the short wave heat inducing transmitter -- we call those electric heaters today -- managed to set the mattress on fire, but not the ceiling above it.

Now, John's scheme to unmask the Avenger is a little convoluted here and may require some explanation. It isn't obvious, but you have to assume that The Avenger is calling John in panel 8 to gloat. It certainly isn't a smart move on The Avenger's part, but John did bait him with the newspaper headline and villains have to save vs. plot to keep from gloating when given the chance.

It's worth pointing out that this is a time before there you could access multiple phone lines with the same phone. So if you wanted to have 13 phone lines, as John sets up here, you need 13 telephones to do it.

Also note the cartoon of Hitler with swakstikas for eyes on the front page of the newspaper.

Sometimes we have to look at Gill Fox's Wun Cloo, despite the painful racism of it, because there are interesting concepts hidden in here. Now, getting a robber to agree to pull into a gas station and park over the car lift is probably the hard part, but if he falls for it, you can lift it off the floor and threaten to set the floor on fire so he can't get out safely.

This is actually a bit of clever naming; the Tennessee Valley is large and the Tennessee Valley Authority built 50 of these dams since 1933. So when you call it the Tennessee Valley Dam, that can be a real dam, without knowing which one.

So Wings hunts down the "pirate dirigible" (even though it's pretty clear a foreign government is responsible for this attack, and for the life of me I can't figure out why he's shooting at the little gondola and not the giant bag of hydrogen directly above it. Does Wings just not like easy victories? "Getting the engine" is definitely a bad result on a random complications table for aerial combat.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Smash Comics #7 - pt. 4

We're back to John Law, Scientective, and last post I had wrongly assumed he was going to use the broken hose as an improvised rope and grappling hook, but more cleverly he had used it to siphon water out of the trap and keep his head above water.

If you can choke down the racism of Wun Cloo, there's an interesting story about foiling an extortion racket with minimal fighting skills.

$50 a week doesn't seem that unreasonable; I wonder if that was something racketeers would have charged in 1940 or if this was meant to be humor.

And here is an intriguing use of invisible ink, though I doubt wearing a confession on the back of your shirt would carry much legal weight.

Hugh Hazzard goes big this month with Hitler, robbing Fort Knox. Well, the story says it's not him, but you see that mustache and you just know better, just like you know "Fort Adam" is really Fort Knox. In the hands of a better writer, this "Goldfinger, but with Hitler" story could be awesome...but "Wayne Reid" was George Brenner, so...

There actually had not been a "public enemy no. 1", officially recognized by the FBI, since 1936, but the concept was clearly still popular in the public consciousness and with comic book writers. Public enemies will be a step above master criminals in the hoodlum hierarchy.

I think we've been able to establish before that Hugh Hazzard is based out of NYC. So, Bozo would need to be able to fly at 390 MPH to get to Fort Knox in 2 hours.

This scene anticipates the end of The Rocketeer movie, when the mobsters turn on the Nazis, by 51 years. Pipalle punches Hitler in the face one year before Captain America famously does.

If you thought Hitler only used gas chambers, you'd be wrong; apparently he had a love for the cliched and also used rooms where the walls close in on you too.

(Scans courtesy of Digital Comic Museum.)

Smash Comics #6 - pt. 3

Long-time readers would know that I've been a fan of John Law, Scientective, since I first discovered him. This installment has a great opening scene with a challenge Heroes seldom have to face -- get someone to the other side of an angry mob, without hurting anyone. Luckily, John has useful contacts all over, including an autogyro owner at the local airport.

It's interesting that June's jitters isn't a character trait, but a valuable clue.

By "cyclatron," John means a cyclotron, a type of particle accelerator invented in 1932. I'm not sure if a cyclotron big enough to fit in your room would be strong enough to stop your watch...but it's just the sort of plausible science that this feature was so good at.

That the murder weapon is a phonograph is a great idea, no matter how shaky the science behind it is.

Sure, John could have just hopped over to the clock and knocked it over to break it, but taking the bigger risk of relying on the cyclotron to stop it is more science-y!

Lastly, before being critical of how lame The Avenger looks with a white hood over his face, just think of what other bad guys wear white hoods...

Another Hero rendered unconscious overnight, and perhaps the first one ever knocked out by a self-inflicted head blow.

Like I said, the science may be iffy, but it's a situation created by science that can be solved with science.

Too bad we get such an abrupt cliffhanger!

Because next thing we know, we're already in the Invisible Hood feature. IH is just tagging along on top of the truck and watching all this, but I wonder what players would do when confronted with the cliche of the fallen man in the road -- just drive over him and go faster?

And it's stolen helium again!

It's worth being reminded how primitive communication technology still was compared to today. Public telephone conversations could be overheard, radio signals could be intercepted, so carrier pigeon is actually still a reasonable alternative circa 1940.

This is Wun Cloo, and while a racial caricature, it's not making up the $1,000 bill -- they were really printed until 1934.

Here's a rare early appearance of FDR and the "conquest-mad dictator" looks more like Hitler than even Eisner has been drawing him so far. Vernon Henkel is on the cutting edge of how the war will soon be treated in all comic books.

Wings seems to have bitten off more than he can chew when he flies over a shipload of smugglers. He stays out of range of their autocannon by staying near the aft end of the ship, but there's a machine gun there and his plane goes down after complications from all those bullets.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)