The word that popped into my head when I saw this comic was "anachronism." Hugo Gernsback's magazines never left the 1920s. Even in 1940 this stuff must have seemed old-fashioned. True, other early comics had weak art and dumb pseudo-scientific stories, but reading this mag you get the feeling its creators still thought radio was a wonderful new invention.
If Frank R. Paul didn't draw the Mitey Powers story, whoever did was under his spell. The creature and alien-city designs come from Paul's "Life on Other Worlds" paintings in the pulps. How much do humans know about the Jovians, anyway? Everyone knows they're a thousand feet tall but no one seems actually to have seen one. The ending provides a real WTF moment. The good guys stop the bad guys by exterminating their entire species??? However I must acknowledge the Professor's cool head in a crisis. When the Jovian says he'll destroy their spaceship the Prof replies, "Well, what do you know about that?"
Some clever kid won ten 1940 dollars by wrapping his handlebars with rubber bands. I can't figure out the stunt with the book. Is it some kind of bookmark or an automatic book opener/closer? Definitely not worth 3 bucks.
Buzz Allen and his pal are jerks. Yet there's something endearing about them using their powers to clown around as well as to fight evil. And the government pays them for saving the world! Here comes "King Phatso" and he's not fat. Casting against type, I guess. Holy cow, they do it again! Buzz kills half the Atlanteans, only one of whom has done anything to him. How does Buzz figure "the young ones" will build a better civilization? How will they even survive after Buzz destroys their heating system? Not only are these boys ageists, they are cold, cold, cold.
Hip Knox--what a terrible name!--has the best artwork so far. Jack Alderman hasn't yet developed his idiosyncratic inking style. Does Hip lose his peculiar mustache until the end of the story? He's always drawn in long shot so I can't tell. Now why would McFadden build the latest type of super rocket-plane then throw it away by using it to shoot Hip into the ocean? They could have just blown Hip up and kept the plane. Yikes! It happens again! This time Hip destroys hundreds of innocent condors. Yet his evil nemesis pays for his crimes by mimicking a seal at Coney Island.
Short features...Smarty Artie is strictly amateur hour. How did Dad come home and sit in his easy chair without noticing his house had been invaded by firemen? More inventions...my dad used that jars-for-nails trick. Can't work up the energy to read the Thoughtwriter story.
Detective Crane looks as if one artist drew the first page and someone else did the rest. Here we are doing radio again. A famous comic trope: the giant Master Switch happens to be within Crane's reach at the critical moment. It reminds me of an Italian comic I read. A guy is trying to save his partner who is trapped in one of those rooms with moving walls. The guy pulls a big switch in the middle of the control panel--and the radio turns on.
Marvo combines annoying pointless captions ("A telling blow!" "Off to see the ruler!"), hopelessly stilted dialogue, and creative spelling ("take a deep breadth"). The art is old-fashioned but competent and the artist seems to have put some work into it. Let's see...in 2680 humanity still hasn't gone into space, but Marvo happens to have a spaceship in his back yard when one is needed. Okay...Oh, no, I can't believe it! Yet another alien-extinction story. Sure, Marvo says the antmen will find "some universe where they're welcome," but he's destroyed their propulsion system and half their other machinery. If Marvo is so brilliant why doesn't he invent a way to balance the antmen's planet against the Earth so both could share the Sun?
Short features again. I've seen some of these tricks but not the alum string or the needle-through-a-coin. Has anyone tried it? How about "Thoughts have weight"? The Little Nemo reprints are nice even when shrunk to comics size. Alibi Alice's bizarre art gives it a modern look; the director looks like a punk rocker with a Mohawk. Bill Holman needn't worry about competition from these visual puns (though I like "a sock in the puss"). I believe "the tortoise and the hare" refers to what used to be called "tortoiseshell" glasses. "Dreams of a Mince Pie Fiend" is "Rarebit Fiend" under a different name, but the balloons don't seem to have been re-lettered. I Googled up a scholarly article claiming "Rarebit" featured stories about both rarebits and mince pies. Did McCay copy his own strip, or did mince pies guest-star in "Rarebit"?
Summing up, the quaintness of this early comic gives it entertainment value despite the disturbing number of mass murders.
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Topic: Week 81 - Superworld Comics #3 (Read 4244 times)
