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[MarkWarner]

Last week's book certainly created some interesting posts, mine (no doubt not so interesting) coming soon ...

This week's book choice is a suggestion from one of our esteemed number:

I have a suggestion for the weekly reading group. I don't think we have looked at any of the Canadian Whites, as they were called, from the forties. May I suggest Freelance from Anglo-American which is in the small publishers section. Some of their other books may also be worth a look as well.

Sounds a great plan. So here we are with Freelance Comics #31 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=58440.
The story we are concentrating on is the first one starting on our page 3.

Happy reading!!

[SuperScrounge]

First Freelance - Not bad. The writing was a little overly simplistic for my tastes, but this was meant for kids, so I probably would have liked it more as a kid.

Sooper Dooper - Ehh...

Second Freelance - About the same as the first story.

Vermont Comes To Texas - Okay.

Third Freelance - Liked this a bit more than the previous installments.

Second Sooper Dooper - *sigh*

Fourth Freelance - Okay.

[SuperScrounge]

One thing I found interesting was how much the Freelance stories felt like they could be Fawcett published stories. The GCD doesn't show any Fawcett credits for Ted McCall, but something about the stories had a Marvel Family vibe about it. (And it can't be a Canadian trait, as I've read most of the Bell Features stuff and they had different vibes.  )

[Morgus]

Way cool. Always had a soft spot for Canadian comics made in the 40's..they gave Michael Gilbert the idea for MR MONSTER, too!
This one was a hoot...I had been showing folks some ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE re-runs last week with the death of June Foray, and Natasha was just perfect...I would have given anything at all for her to even say the words 'moose' or 'squirrel' just once and not even together...
The less said about 'blow me' as a exclamation, the better...
And yeah...the Gobi desert. Famous as a Nazi hideout for decades. Guess they missed Casablanca.
The ad in the front was a pure delight.
Lots of fun.

[John Kerry]

Ted McCall was a Canadian who  prior to creating Freelance had written two comic strips, both for the Toronto Evening Telegram (later simply the Toronto Telegram). The first was Men of the Mounted which ran from February 13th, 1933 to February 16th, 1935. He them wrote the strip Robin Hood and Company which started on September 23rd, 1935 and ended on February 16th, 1939. The Robin Hood strip was later collected into comic books by Anglo-American. In fact there are several of them on this site. Maybe we should examine one of them in the future. Anglo-American, besides doing several original titles were also the publisher of Fawcett comics here in Canada. Apparently they had the scripts sent to their offices and had local artists do the artwork for them. The Anglo-American Spy Smasher #1 in on this site but I am not sure if it is the same as the Fawcett version or not.

[paw broon]

This was a decent read, BUT, he has a costume and I consider him a costumed adventurer and we only see him in costume 3? times.  What a shame as the book just reads like any other adventure story.  I admit, I'm a bit geeky about hero costumes and if a character has one, I prefer to see it.  A costume, or in this case, the tight, red shirt with the "L" logo makes all the difference to me, it seems.  That said, I enjoyed the adventures, my preferred episode being the 3rd. part of the desert story, despite the off register colour.
I notice at one point a prose box refers to him as Lance.  Odd.

[Captain Audio]

Lance seems to wear a burnoose more than anything else, even when inappropriate.

Strange how the soldier of fortune is no longer considered a heroic figure. Things were more black and white back then.

[MarkWarner]

Freelance: The story and characters have a real Victorian "ripping yarn" feel to them. This extends to the dialogue which I found to be very stilted. BUT I thought it was great fun and I thoroughly enjoyed it

The Sooper Dooper page had a feeble currency joke. I have a much better and topical one (we have a new pound coin currently coming into circulation) .

"I'm not a fan of the new pound coin, but then again, I hate all change" - Ken Cheng

The next Freelance story is a bit more exotic and "Asian". There were also a lot more words (well it felt like it) ... I struggled a bit, but it was worth it. Again I get a real pre-comicbook feel to the stories and dialogue.

It is followed by another and we have a full on femme fatale in the mould of the Dragon Lady.

Sooper Dooper: Another weak joke ... so here is another much better one

"I've given up asking rhetorical questions. What's the point?" - Alexei Sayle

The book ends with a final Freelance story. I now see my earlier Dragon Lady comment  was leading me somewhere. I now know where, this feels a lot like Terry and the Pirates  - with Freelance = Pat Ryan, etc.

Verdict: A hit. It was quite a "meaty" book and I wish I had set aside more time to read it. If I was around "back in the day", I'd certainly have bought this.

[narfstar]

Very nice art and pretty good action story. I agree Mark that Freelance would likely have been something I would have bought and enjoyed back in the day.

[crashryan]

I'm late in getting to this one, but I wanted to put in my two cents (Canadian). I'd already read and commented on this book, but I read it again anyway. I liked it just as much the second time around. It's interesting to learn that the writer had newspaper strip experience. These stories play very much like newspaper strip stories. I'd even wondered if they were strip reprints, given the way the first three stories follow each other in sequence.

They're good, solid stories with good, solid artwork. Not world-shaking, but satisfying. In my earlier comment I mentioned that the art looks like how Wilson McCoy's Phantom might have looked had McCoy known how to draw. Morgus' comparison to Fawcett comics is an good one. There is a certain Costanza-shop feel to Furness' drawings.

I don't know why they bothered giving Freelance a costume. He never uses it and he doesn't need it. He's just a straight adventure hero.

I didn't like the last story as much. It reads like a Blackhawk story with Japanese instead of Commies. Good airplane drawings, though. I miss Natasha. Not that she did much in the other stories, but it was fun having Freelance pal around with a Russian secret agent.

One more thing: the second time through I still had trouble with the lettering. Many A's somehow look like R's, and the odd Y's occasionally become U's. However, having just lettered a page for the first time in several years and having it look like *&#@, I don't feel entirely comfortable criticizing Furness' lettering, which is a damn sight better than mine, funny A's and all.