The Arrow was interesting to me for many reasons: a) the small frames at the tops of pages which seemed purely decorative, not diegetic; b) the pre-code violence in which a comic hero not only kills bad guys but fires arrows into a crowd of them; and c) the discovery of the work of Claire S. Moe, a pioneering female comic author and artist.
Whereas the initial story in this volume, "Boss Kidnaps D.A.," seems relatively straight-forward, it didn't cause me to briefly have to suspend my disbelief as in the "Episode of the Daring Escape." Admittedly, there may have been a need to conserve pages an be economical in storytelling, but it was jarring to start the story thinking that this was a gang working from the outside of the penitentiary to bring about the escape and realize (not really until the battering ram car bursts out the gates from the inside) suddenly that the characters were the escapees themselves. It definitely made me wonder how the leader got his gat while inside.
Another problem with suspension of disbelief occurred in the otherwise intriguing "Dragon's Face Bank Robbers." SPOILER ALERT: If you don't want a key scene revealed, skip to next paragraph. In the scene aboard the ship, I don't understand how on earth even a character like The Arrow could possibly remove those huge chains which attach to the rudder of a big ship. It just strained my credulity, to say the least (and I am usually pretty solid in suspending my disbelief in order to let a few things go by).
One last observation about The Arrow stories. I was amused to note that, at least in these stories, The Arrow crashes through windows as often as The Hood (in another title from another publisher) gets bopped on the head. But I get it. It's like Hollywood special effects. It looks extra-dramatic!
The Dan Savage of the Mounted didn't grab me so much via John F. Kulb's art, but because of my fond memories of both watching Sgt. Preston of the Yukon on television, but also listening on the radio. I didn't care for the pasty, white, largely undefined faces of the characters, but I enjoyed the story.
Signals in the Sky was another back-up or ancillary story in this issue. The hero, not recognized by me, seems to be a woodsman, mountain man. When a kidnapped boy uses Morse Code to ask for help, the woodsman comes running. Seeing that he can't do anything directly without risking injury to the boy, he comes up with an interesting use for his "pet" skunk. However, because of a coloring error, it looked more like a squirrel than a skunk when she or he first appears and takes on correct coloring when the boy is holding her or him.
My favorite story in the "back of book" section was Claire S. Moe's "Poison of the Jungle Flower." A cross between Tarzan or Jungle Jim and a Weird Tales pulp adventure, I was fascinated enough by the premise to put it in my "memory bank" as a possible sidequest in a Dungeons & Dragons-type adventure sometime in the future.
Harold Hughes Death from the Skies and Pursuit (a two-part episode) was interesting, but nothing about that adventure stands out in my mind.
All in all, I'm looking forward to devouring the other two issues hosted here on cbp.
Link to the book:
The Arrow 1
