1)Paddy Payne boasts exceptional artwork. I don't care for war stories, but I admit this one really moves. The author piles on those punchy action verbs recommended in "how to write pulp fiction" articles. His motto seems to be "No noun without an adjective, no verb without an adverb." The result is overheated prose that borders on parody: "Ripped and riddled, the stricken Junkers plunged down--to strike the runway shatteringly!"
2)Sandy Dean's Schooldays is the precise male equivalent of the girls' school stories I've been reading in Schoolgirls' Picture Library. The artwork is good but has a 1930s feel.
3)Rory Macduff piles a lot into two pages. I wracked my brain for a reason Rory would bail out before disarming the bomb. I concluded he figured that if the bomb exploded it would kill only himself, not the others on the plane. However he came awfully close to blowing up a schoolyard full of children. But no time to think about that...it's off to another adventure with a villain whose chin is even bigger than Rory's.
4)Behind Enemy Lines
This story did nothing for me. After a lengthy buildup the enemy's plot is foiled and their base vaporized in a couple of paragraphs.
5)Captain Condor
I liked Captain Condor's blobby monster, half of which turns into a Scotsman. The artwork is solid.
6)Robot Archie
This story is grand fun. Over time Archie became more powerful and independent, even developing a personality. However I prefer this version's no-frills clunkiness. Good artwork, too.
7)Billy the Kid
After all those serials I was pleased that Billy the Kid was a complete story. The artists' drawing is good though his compositions are often awkward. The last-panel payoff is actually funny. The story suffers badly from over-captioning. In many panels the caption could be dropped without losing anything beyond a few dozen adjectives. Parenthetically, if I were an outlaw I'd have a hard time taking seriously a lawman who yells "Yip yip yip! Hi yo!" while he's pounding on me.
8}Captives in El Dorado
This story is interesting mostly for the artwork. Nice ships. I did have trouble figuring out which man was Mark Petrel, and we never get a clear shot of Captain Standish. Given that he's Captain Standish's cabin boy, I wonder why Mark is chosen to accompany Cary Pinecoffin (great name) on his quest. Other than the obvious reason that Mark is the feature's hero.
1)
Paddy PayneI could hardly concentrate on what was happening in Paddy Payne's episode, because of all the adverbs and adjectives. It's really a NO NO. After having a big laugh, My editors would have thrown this back in my face, and told me to get serious about my career, and turn in no more of this silliness, or I'd be looking for another employer. It really causes so much attention to be laced on the ridiculous attempt to make the writing "interesting" that it stops the story flow, making the reader forget what's happening in the story.
2)
Sandy Dean's SchooldaysI agree that this story is similar to the 1830s style of "Schoolgirls' Picture Library". Can't judge how good the story is from one short episode. It was set up well enough for me to be curious about what the motive is to kidnap the student, and replace him with an imposter. That means it is reasonably well-written. I hope there is a scandal involved with the management of the school, and the imposter student is a very mature young genius detective, who is operating as a private detective, even while he is attending school.
3)
Rory Macduff This small episode of only 2 pages has a pretty heavy event, with our hero risking his life to save everyone in his airplane, and also try to avoid having anyone down on the ground in Greater London be killed. It's frustrating for the reader to know nothing about who placed the bomb and what his organisation had as a motive. But, that also provides suspense, and a reason to buy the next edition of the comic book. My pet peeve with this story is the plethora of textual narrative describing what we are already seeing in the illustrations. Sequential comic art storytelling has, by its nature, a very limited amount of space to provide a graphic description of the story that the author is trying to tell. It's a SIN to waste a bunch of that space telling the reader something he or she already knows, because he or she sees it. Personally, i would have removed all the text repeating what is known, which would be about 80% of it. THAT action would provide about 15 - 20% more panel space to show more artwork (more panels in the 2 pages) to show a few more key scenes that could provide better understanding of what is going on. A couple of the panels could add a better (more complete) view of the setting (surroundings), and a couple could provide views of more of the different characters' (or lead character's) emotions, while 1 or 2 more could show key actions that otherwise couldn't be shown.
4)
Behind Enemy Lines This text story had too many unbelievable things happen. It reminded me of the simple, not-well-thought out superhero stories. Everything happened too easily, and just what the author needed. It was ridiculous that the heroes "guessed" correctly the exact empty atoll in The Pacific Ocean with no concrete information, only because it is off the shipping lanes there must be hundreds of atolls off the shipping lanes in Melanesia within several hundred miles of Papua or Malaya. But we are supposed to believe they figured out the exact one chosen, without knowing The Germans' and Japanese's authorities goals, needs and constraints. It would be more believable that one of their colleagues who had radio contact with them, understood German, and had heard a German coded radio transmission, and sent it to Bletchley Park to have it decoded, and got the information back in enough time to act.
5)
Captain CondorThis science fiction story episode hasn't turned me off with magic-style science-less fantasy, and held my interest enough to want to read the following episode. The artwork is good, and the narrative and dialogue didn't get in the way of following the story. A decent mix of words and illustrations working together to tell a story is what comic books are supposed to be.
6)
Robot ArchieThis teen adventure story is in the common 1940s and '50s format for that genre, where some teen boys somehow are allowed to travel without adult supervision in a foreign (often 3rd World) country which still is stuck in living conditions of The Middle Ages. British India was only like that in remote farm areas. The country DID have railroads, automobiles, and most of the inventions 1st World countries enjoyed. I hate the smug superior attitude taken by The British and Americans in portraying 3rd World nations and peoples in their entertainment vehicles. (much as I hated growing up as a "subject" of a king and a queen. I suppose the southern Asian country dreamed up for this story is supposed to be a principality like Nepal, still ruled by a Rajah, but not located in the high mountains, such as Nepal, Bhutan, or Sikkim. And, of course, tremendously valuable jewels are involved. These 2-page episodes are too short to show much. This one was pretty boring, missing the action scenes that no doubt preceded it, and likely will follow it, with the teen heroes and their robot confronting the crooked would-be usurper and jewel thief. This might make a good Uncle Scrooge adventure, with inventor Gyro Gearloose inventing the robot, which might have some surprising features and abilities(akin to magic powers of superheroes).
7)
Billy the KidI also was pleased to read an entire, intact story, despite it being "campy", and not so much like the real mid 1800s American West, and giving a false impression of a real, historical figure. Henry McCarty Alias William Bonney was a murderer and a thief and a wanted US Federal criminal, and refugee from the law. He wouldn't have had time, or wanted to take the risk to be a protector of the innocent against criminals, and help to the police. The action was not very believable. A group of several hardened criminals who rob banks, stage coaches, and trains are not going to stand around and allow on, single gunslinger to capture all of them, so they can be incarcerated in prison, possibly for the rest of their lives. And, I wouldn't describe the small bit of action in this story as the advert for the next issue did, as "rip-roaring". It was not a very inventive plot, being very cliched.
8}
Captives in El Dorado I agree that it is very unlikely that the adventurer, Pinecoffin, would go into the uncharted jungle, which contained hostile and dangerous native tribes (we find out are cannibals), accompanied only by a young (late teenaged or early 20s aged cabin boy, who was bound to be a lot less experienced in combat and survival skills than another experienced sailor/adventurer in his late 20s or early 30s. It seems unlikely that the two of them could survive given the small amount of supplies depicted. I'd guess that they really wouldn't know how to survive in that tropical rainforest and to gain enough sustainance once their supplies would run out. To be honest, from the clean look of Pinecoffin, he looks like he has not yet had any experience in combat or struggles for survival in uncivilised territory. It's not terribly believable that Captain Standing would allow his cabin boy to go off with him to almost certain death from tropical illness, dangerous animals, or unfriendly native tribes (who are rightly unfriendly to the Europeans, who have maltreated them in past encounters (Spanish, Portuguese, British, Dutch, and French), all of whom brought horrid diseases to them, traded unfairly, went back on their word, cut down forest, taking away their known habitat, killed many of their kin with their superior mechanised weapons, after misunderstandings and disagreements. Another problem reading only 3 pages at a time is joining in mid stream and not knowing the hero's back story. Hard to identify emotionally with the young cabin boy. Like several of the other stories, the artwork is of good quality.
Author
Topic: Week 213--Lion and Sun 14 November 1959 (Read 1667 times)
