I'll bet I'm the last to comment...lost a few days for eye maintenance.
I like anthology comics if the strips are interesting. I much prefer it when they run 3 or more pages per strip rather than two; there's just not enough meat.
Starts off with a great cover. Alden McWilliams was the king of airplanes!
Don Winslow: I was surprised by the intensity of the paranoia. I thought all the spy craziness came after the US entered he war. Reminds me of today's terrorist hysteria. Don's sidekick makes me think of the guy Jerry Shuster drew in Slam Bradley--after he had a nose job.
Looney Luke: Racism aside, this is darn near incomprehensible. I suspect the writer had specific ideas on what should be in the panels and the artist copped out. What's with the gallons of sweat even when Luke isn't inside the mummy case?
Myra North: Didn't quite get the drift of this, since it wrapped up a soap opera plot. Decent artwork. So the agent wants Myra to come to Hollywood because she knows how to boss the actress around? Okayyyy...
Hold everything: raised a smile.
Stratosphere Jim: I first ran into Jim as a teenager, when I found the Whitman novelization. At the time I had no idea it came from a comic book. I went crazy for the planes, especially Jim's Flying Fortress. This early episode has only his superplane, which is still very cool. McWilliams was still working out how to draw people and backgrounds, but he was already up to speed on machinery. Not much storywise, though...building up to a new storyline.
Wash Tubbs: Great! Plenty of story despite being continued. Crane was a master of layout and slam-bang action. He was one of the few artists (I feel) who successfully combined cartoony artwork with straight storylines. You never notice the characters are bigfoot guys.
Red Ryder is one of those strips which I can appreciate for good artwork and decent stories, but I just can't get into. Plenty of excitement, though.
Out Our Way: meh.
Ed Tracer: a Dell original. I wondered whether or not the brother was a crook, so the author did his job. Not so bad except the dialogue flows in like the tide until it nearly drowns the artwork. Funny to see Ed turn into Pat Ryan with white hair, which makes him resemble Kerry Drake.
Apple Mary: Okay, I get it that the missing box is very important, but the story rambles on and on. Injecting broad humor into a melodramatic story just jumbles it up. I'm tossing the apple back at Mary.
Boots: Huh?
Our Boarding House.: I remember Our Boarding House from my grade-school days. It was a single panel in which some idiot bloviated endlessly in a single huge balloon, and I always fell asleep before the third sentence. Now here he is in an unfunny Sunday strip. Blah blah blah blah. Maggie and Jiggs did the battle of the sexes thing much better, and I hated that strip too.
Clyde Beatty: I didn't understand the big climax. They seem to have left out a few panels.
Win $25: No, win five dollars. I was a canny child, and saw through the "...in prizes" scam.
Bob Strong: The good old days when Great White Hunters went out and grabbed whatever no matter what the locals said. Bob's in the right, though, since the snake was being used for nefarious purposes. I like the line, "Iconis say master is welcome to big snake." All the "Copyright by R.S. Callender" stuff seems to be Dell originals.
Freckles: It's like two different strips. The author says, "Okay, funtime's over; let's have some drama." Unfortunately Freckles doesn't take part.
Fillers: meh.
Dan Dunn: Better than the radio play anyway. Typical second-string secret agent stuff.
Johnson Smith: I want to print a newspaper while watching a movie and firing my blank cartridge pistol at a live chameleon.
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Topic: Week 118 - Crackajack Funnies #21 (Read 2901 times)
