Dis Is Poipetual Motion Thursday!

You had to have high hopes for The Four Comrades. They were yet another all boy team, much like the Newsboy Legion, the Young Allies, and N'Sync. They appeared for (if you can believe this) twenty issues of Startling Comics. Then again, when your lead-off character is The Fighting Yank, I suppose it's not that tough to make the junior varsity squad at that particular high school, if you know what I mean (and I think you do).


What I find particularly annoying about reading a Four Comrades story is that you can never tell who is who. Everyone wears the exact same costume with no deviation whatsoever. I realize the Comrade on the left was wearing yellow shorts while everyone else was wearing red, but that was simply a printing error. The idea was that all four of them had to look exactly the same. I would think the purpose would be extra caution of protecting one's secret identity, but they all called each other by their real first names whether they were in costume or not.


Like most characters in Startling Comics, the copyright holders didn't renew their rights, so they reappeared in 2003's Terra Obscura, which is something I'll certainly be reading soon. Considering how most revivals of characters go, I'm sure at least one of them died in a cocaine-infused murder-suicide pact, but I'll pick it up somewhere and find out for certain some day.

Or maybe I won't. I'm not at all sure I care. I'll tell you about whom I would like an update: Black Satan, their first foe:


Isn't he awesome? These boys are knocking the snot out of a bunch of grown men, and all Black Satan has to do is show up, whack one of them upside and say, "You boys stop that! Don't make me go in there!" He's like that uncle everyone has that you just don't cross.




See? What did I just say? You don't give a guy who calls himself "Black Satan" a bunch of static. You just step aside, brother. Just step aside.

See you tomorrow!