The more I read comics produced by Bernard Baily's company, the more I'm struck by what hodgepodges they are. People talk about Golden Age publishers throwing everything on the wall to see what stuck. Bailey gathered up all the stuff that didn't stick and put it in his comics. Sometimes it seems the jumbled stories must be reprints, but I haven't found evidence that they weren't created for this magazine.
I tried--honest, I did!--to read everything but I couldn't do it. The humor strips defeated me. They are so bad! An exception is "Whitey and the Magic Crown." The story isn't any good, but the artwork is amazing. It looks like it came from a 60s underground comic.The art is credited to Al Stahl. I've seen a lot of Stahl's work and it has a certain craziness to it. But I haven't seen anything this trippily drawn and slickly inked.
The Luckyman story is so-so.They might have made the character work if they'd added more humor. Maybe each of his lucky breaks is the result of a succession of coincidences that is so preposterous even Luckyman can't believe it. I'm thinking here of the scene in The City of Lost Children in which a Rube Goldberg string of chance incidents combine to cause a steamship to run aground just in time to save our heroes. Even so the one-joke premise would quickly go stale.
The real "Gold Medal" winner today is Captain Truth, comics' first gay superhero. I appreciate the premise that the crook is a decent guy who went bad because he was desperate to feed his family, and gets a chance to turn his life around. But the choppy script bounces from one bizarre episode to another. What's with the old witch? Does she grant Joey's wish to fly or are we supposed to believe that a sudden gust of wind somehow sweeps the kid away? Why do we need this witch/wish subplot anyway? Strangest moment of all comes when Ken discovers he and his neighbors have been summarily thrown out of their homes despite their having paid their rents. Enter Donald Trump's father, proclaiming that they should be proud to be homeless because their buildings will be torn down to build his magnificent new housing project. And Captain Truth buys it! Captain Sucker, I say.
Other notes: The wife in "Jones and his Mrs." is the ultimate expression of the sadistic ball-buster. I never found these marital strife stories funny and this one tops 'em all in sheer hatefulness. "Trixie" looks exactly like Little Audrey. Is someone being a wise guy by naming the rich girl Little Audrey? "The Witch of Salem" is pretty good. It has the best script in the book (and just about the only coherent one.) Fun to see two very early strips by my old friend Manny Stallman. They aren't very good, though. John Giunta seems to have helped on the inks. The two produced quite a few strips as a team. I enjoy Jolly Roger's crack about heroes with cast-iron heads. But if I want a girlfriend, I'm steering clear of Cheryl. She runs the crooks' car (with boyfriend inside) off the road, causing a huge crash. Then she approaches the wreckage musing, "Now if only Dennis isn't hurt, we'll have a chance!" You should have thought of that first, baby! Thanks for nothing!
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Topic: Week 128 - Gold Medal #1 (Read 2538 times)
