Wednesday, August 7, 2013

AM I SHOUTING? I DON'T MEAN TO BE SHOUTING! AM I SHOUTING?

Hey!  Guess who located a copy of America's Best Comics #20?  That's right!

We lead off with a Black Terror story.  I never noticed this before, but Bob has a bit of a time with volume control:


I am certainly not a hero by any definition, but if I were and I had a secret identity, I probably wouldn't shout out my secret in mid-wardrobe change.  "Who wants microwave popcorn, AND WASN'T THAT A CRAZY ADVENTURE WE JUST HAD AS THE TERROR TWINS, TIM?"  I mean, it's not like poor Tim's secret identity, which is none because he's called "Tim" in costume, isn't flimsy enough.

So anyway, they go beat up bad guys because this is comics and that's just what people in comics do:


And then, this guy says this:


I KNOW, RIGHT?

Yes, he called the Black Terror "Iron Man," about 20 years before the Iron Man character.  Did it influence Stan Lee and Larry Lieber?  Who knows? 

Anyway, there's a situation and Bob's girlfriend Jean is right where she shouldn't be because that's the way a girlfriend's hero in the 1940's rolled:


Although, to her credit, that was an appropriate use of a raised voice.


An atomic bomb is about to go off, Jean!  Now is not the time to bemoan your love life!

Eesh.  Let's pay a detour to the Golden Age Phantom Lady #16:

Even the most casual nerdlinger will recognize that the villain makes the hero.  For example, it's not hard to immediately think of the Joker when one thinks of Batman.

Keep that in mind for me, would you?


Yes, the Phantom Lady is fighting a guy who is so morbidly obese that he isn't fully ambulatory.

And she still has problems with him:


Seriously?  The guy can barely move, you're in the dark, and all you can do is run in circles?

Yup.  She's only saved when the cops show up...


... and only then is she all "I've got him! I've got him!"


Oy.

See you tomorrow!

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Isn't Bob (Black Terror) Benton a pharmacist? Why does he own a helicopter?

Adam Barnett said...

Pharmacy apparently paid better back in the day... or maybe helicopters were cheaper :-)