Slup! Slup! Slup! Giff Me MORE!

From Pep Comics #4....

They may be courageous, but the Tong hasn't figured out the "work smarter, not harder" approach.  If you can't fight back against the brass warriors, why not just shoot their flesh-and-bone commander?  She threatens your life... you shoot her!

Maybe it's a cultural thing.

And if you weren't inclined to shoot her before, I give you:

In other words, Fu Chang (... International Detective) can do all the heavy lifting while Princess just sits there and looks pretty.  What a deal!

Are you ready for another team-up?  Because the Midshipman meets the Wizard!  Or The Midshipman meets The Wizard!  Either way, buckle your seatbelts! 

I'm starting to see why most characters from the Silver Age forward duke it out when they first meet one another, because that was pretty lame.  And my expectations for a team-up between the Wizard and the Midshipman were pretty dang low to begin with.

The only thing that can salvage this for me is a shot of a Nazi Officer getting a tub of Saurbraten on his head.

Oh, comics.... you always come through for me just when I need you the most.

All the News We Think You Need to Know!

So I'm reading my fourth "Press Guardian" story, and I'm more convinced than ever that they're just making things up as the go along.  We've already changed the main character's name and costume, so anything goes. 

For example:

So the girl he rescued from the Moroniabund figured out who the Press Guardian was... probably because he waltzed around without a mask in front of her last issue.  But who is Perry's valet?  Heck if I know, and I've been reading this from the beginning!

Well, it's not the greatest mystery.  His name is "The Press Guardian," and he only seems to be interested in things that directly affect his father's newspaper.  And he usually wears the same suit after he puts his mask on, and it's a really pronounced green color.  You don't exactly need a Rosetta Stone to figure this one out.

Anyway, on to more pressing questions, like...

How is he able to shrug off bullets?  That has yet to be explained and since they keep going back to that ability, they really need to explain it.  It's starting to grind my gears a bit.

And now, an off-screen death:

Well, that was quite an afterthought.  When and how did the leader of the graft ring kill himself?  It seems like a story centered on the art of journalism would be a bit more forthcoming in the details.  This must have been the predecessor of Fox News.  ZING!

See you tomorrow!

Yay! I Cut Off a Man's Leg! I'm the Best Hero EVER!

Following up with yesterday's teaser, Pep Comics #4 did indeed have a cross-over between the Shield and the Wizard.  Or is it The Shield and The Wizard?

Anyway, here it is:

And they exchanged info and went their separate ways.

I'm not picking on this story for going in that direction.  Heck, the Justice Society spent 80% of their time on solo missions before actually teaming up.  Remember how many issues of World's Finest it took before Superman and Batman actually got together aside from the covers?  That was just how they rolled back in the Golden Age.

What I noticed was how civilized everyone was in their first meeting.  If this had been a Stan Lee comic, the two would have beaten each other half to death and caused at least a couple of million dollars in property damage before declaring a draw.

Anyway, the Shield story was pretty weak, so on to the Comet.  Or is it The Comet?  There has to be a rule here, but dang if I know what it is, and I have a degree (cum laude, no less) in English.

The Comet, you may recall, is on the run after going on a killing spree whilst under the influence of hypnosis. So, he finds himself out in the sticks where some kind of mining is taking place.

So he amputates that poor guy's leg and is actually feeling pretty good about it.  The camera cut away from the poor guy languishing in pain, clutching his stump in agony while the Comet flew off in a moment of self-congratulation.  Of course, one wonders why he didn't try to disintegrate the ground under the guys leg to try wriggling it out, but I'm not the guy with the lifty visor.

The bottom line: The Comet gives up fighting crime to work for the Occupational Health and Safety Administration:

No, not really.  But wouldn't that have been hilarious?

See you Monday!

My Super Brain, Drugs, and the Metric System

Apparently, the qualifications for having a "super-brain," were a bit lower back in the day:

So we're supposed to get all weak in the knees because he correctly identified three people in uniform/costume?  Slow down, Wizard!  Let me catch my breath!  

And he even correctly identified himself. 

And now, a public service message from Fu Chang.... International Detective:

It's like every Afterschool Special I ever watched.

Meanwhile, let's check in on Sgt. Effin' Boyle...

Ten to one... or as we count here in the USA, three to one.  That Metric System gets a little complicated when you try to convert it to ours.

That reminds me... remember the Metric Marvels?

This was back in the day when we were going to convert to the Metric System.  The system itself was actually easy to grasp, but everyone insisted that you had to know the formulas to convert our current system to Metric and vice versa.  That involved a lot of math, and we as a culture just weren't going to do that.  Had they just said, "We're following the Metric System now," and switched everything, it probably would have worked out.  But some people just won't relax unless you're forced to do things the hard way.

Thusly:

See?  5/8th of a mile?  Screw you, Metric System!

Ah, memories.

See you tomorrow!

Forget the Writer or the Artist, I Buy Books Based on Who the Associate Editor Is!

So I'm leafing through All-Flash Quarterly #8.  You may recall that the powers that be put a poll in the book, asking readers to weigh in as to how they felt about Winky, Blinky and Noddy as well as whether they wanted to see full-length stories or four shorter ones.  Winky, Blinky and Noddy (unlike Jason Todd) were given a vote of approval by the readers, while readers were reportedly evenly-divided as to the length of the stories.  So, they cut the figurative baby in half and announced that future issues would have two longish stories of 32 pages (rather than four 16-pagers or one 64 pager), disappointing everyone equally.

I, for one, wanted short stories but I was about 70 years too late to cast a meaningful ballot.  I wasn't in favor of long stories because that meant when a story opened with something like this:

... you were stuck with it for 64 pages.  

What struck me as funny about this is that the kid was blind and was having complications from an operation designed to restore his sight.  The upshot was that if he couldn't stay awake without stimulus (no Mountain Dew for him!), he wouldn't survive. The kid's mother remarked that the kid was a huge fan of the Flash and so Jay shows up to tell him a story.  Because kids never fall asleep when you tell them a story while they're laying flat on their backs in a bed.

Which meant that we got a lot of stuff like this: 

I don't know what kind of "quick relief" he's talking about, but the look on his face is telling me I don't want it.

It didn't get any better, even in a "it's so bad it's good because I can make fun of it on CMNS" kind of way.  As you might expect, the kid regains his sight and realize that Jay and the Flash are one in the same.

And now that you can see, do I have any boogers?

Okay, I'm better than that.  My point with the panel is that Jay was talking to the kid as the Flash the entire time and isn't quick enough to stop the kid's chatter before he gets out everything but the last syllable?  That room still has the doctor and the kid's mother in there, so I'm pretty sure the cat's out of the proverbial sack.

Here was an ad I saw for the second issue of Wonder Woman:

Well, I was going to skip it, but ALICE MARBLE, WORLD'S FORMER AMATEUR TENNIS CHAMPION IS THE ASSOCIATE EDITOR?  Well, put a gun to my head, why don'tcha?  That rocks on so many levels!

See you tomorrow!

Death Strikes and Major Stuart Drinks Heavily!

As I bid a fond farewell to Pep Comics #3, let's pay a visit to Bentley of Scotland Yard!

Don't ever hang around with Bentley.  People who hang around Bentley drop like flies.

I accuse nobody... I trust nobody... I guarantee the safety of nobody...

I told you so.

Fortunately, Major Stuart clearly sees this as a wake-up call to treasure the moments of his own life...

And Bentley discovers the killer used a knife-shooting cane to kill his victims discreetly...

... and, of course, Bentley knew exactly how to use said cane:

So, is there a training course at Scotland Yard on knife-throwing canes?  Because he sure picked that skill up in a hurry!

Check out this ad in the back cover....

I have no idea how/if this worked, but if this is an honest-to-goodness vinyl recorder, a similar device will run you about $4200 bucks these days.  I presume that for $4200, you can make an LP as opposed to a "full 3 minutes."   But it was this little bit of text that tickled me....

Well I don't know how many orchestras or radio programs only performed for three minutes, but I'm guessing it wasn't very many.  And telling me to pirate performances?  My, how times have changed.

See you tomorrow!

Clever Lois!

Hey!  Robert Gillis was kind enough to send me some panels from the always-bizarre Lois Lane title.

Here's the setup: Lois got superpowers somehow because all kinds of strange physiological things happen to her in her own title despite the fact that they rarely happen anywhere else.  She decides to become "Superwoman," partly because she's not that creative and partly because she's one of those chicks who tries out your last name long before you've given her any inclination that you're that serious about her.  You know the type.  

Anyhoo, she makes lightning with her hands.  Thusly:

Okay, lightning comes about when ice and water particles collide and build up large electrical fields in the clouds.  The lightning is the discharge of that.  Sooooooo... while I appreciate that she can applaud with the best of them, I don't think the prerequisite conditions for lightning have been met.  But Lois Lane  is a comic meant for girls, I suppose, so why worry about being accurate?  How much science does a girl need to know to be a secretary or a housewife?

And here we have Lois failing to see through yet another disguise:

I'm impressed that Perry White was able to hide a cigar under a mask.  I'm not certain from this vantage point that it was actually lit, but that would still create kind of an odd bump in the mask.  Egad!  You have a tumor shaped .... almost like a cigar!  You should really get that looked at!  Of course, the king of the ridiculous disguise application is still Batman, what with the ability to hide rigid bat ears in a skull cap, but that's still some pretty good work by Perry White.

See you tomorrow!