[Johnny L. Wilson]

The Wizard serves as the lead feature in this anthology comic, a sister publication to Pep Comics where The Shield serves as lead feature. The villains in this episode are the Jatsonians plotting to destroy the submarine fleet at Pearl Harbor [Hmm, wonder what Jatsonian sounds like?] In later episodes, multiple heroes across Top Notch and Pep Comics will face the Mosconians (Gee, wonder who that would be?).

Scott Rand in the Worlds of Time: This is a time travel feature that doesn’t worry about making waves in the time continuum, which is surprising since it is written by Otto Binder (as Eando Binder), a science-fiction writer in his own right. Of course, this is an origin story, one of those getting the gang together, so I’m not quite sure where it’s going. It could be fun or it might end up being an extended temporal scavenger hunt. The first time I read an Otto Binder story had to have been one of the Superman’s Girlfriend Lois Lane comics that he wrote with Bill Finger in the late ‘50s and all through the ‘60s. Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ve read any of his science-fiction novels, but I’ll keep an eye out for that nom de plume, Eando Binder.

Swift of the Secret Service in “Murder by Sock:” The admiral’s hat in this feature seemed pretty strange and anachronistic so I searched and found one image on the web that corresponded to this uniform as it was rendered. Apparently, this was only for full-dress uniforms and fairly rare in the U.S., but fairly common in international settings because of protocol. Even then, the full dress regalia like in this feature was suspended in late 1940. So, I learned something as a result of something that I thought didn’t look right. Meanwhile, the story could have been any detective or agent on vacation, but it was entertaining enough to keep me flipping pages.

Air Patrol in “Sky Raiders of the Western Front: Vendetta for Von Schiller” had that nice wartime adventures for boys feel to it. It reminded me so much of the Dave Dawson series from Grosset & Dunlap that I read as a boy (after finding them in thrift shops—not when they were first published—grin). The nostalgia effect was so strong that I downloaded a eBook of another Grosset & Dunlap series called The Moving Picture Boys and published under the same house name as the one used by Tom Swift authors, Victor Appleton. But back to this story! It’s the start of a revenge story, featuring a bit of a flashback and a bit of the present. The airplane graphics aren’t super-realistic (nor are some of the acrobatics) but they convey the ideas well enough to keep you wanting more.

“Murder Rap” is a four-page text adventure right out of the pulps. In fact, it could have been pulled right from the pages of the Columbia Publications’ Double-Action Detective published by Maurice Coyne and company before forming MLJ to publish comic books. I mention this because the hard-boiled detective in this story is named “Lucky” Coyne. The story has a rather vicious twist at the end after the damsel in distress comes to her senses. Ironically, it features more action scenes than some of the feature comic stories in this issue.

Lucky Coyne also appears in the comic feature of the same name. In “The Bat and the Bull,” gangster Bat Yardley invades a rival gang’s hideout which his disguised girlfriend has already infiltrated. So far, so good, but then we have some strange narration about Yardley tripping on the window sill and being pounced upon by Bull, yet the image is of Bat slugging Bull and knocking him down. And there are color consistency issues between panels on page 43 of our PDF. In one panel, Bull is wearing a green suit, but when he is knocked down by Bat, he’s wearing an orange suit like Bat. There’s even some mistaken identity switcheroos in this story. The weird thing is when “Lucky” is revealed, takes off his wig, and his female ally calls him “Red.” I understand this feature usually ran in another company’s titles.

The Mystic in “The Fortune Teller’s Revenge” is full of “rock-em, sock-em” fight scenes, but it also builds off stage magic and escape acts. This story of abduction and escape seems fairly straight-forward, but it offers plenty of potential for a good series.

The West Pointer in “Kornell Goes to West Point” may be the predecessor to The Midshipman in Pep Comics. This is an origin story with minimal conflict, but I’m certain there will be intrigue and espionage in future stories.

Of course, if “G-Men” can be a successful radio show based on true stories, “Manhunters” can be a successful comic series. In “Case 1: Master Forgers” by one of my favorites, Jack Cole, we go to Milwaukee for the action. The story relays some clever facts and has that Jack Cole specialty of the equipment diagram in one of the panels. This is a well-done story that could have gone wrong in the wrong hands.

Link to the book: Top Notch Comics 01