[SuperScrounge]

There would not have been a games in 1949, but I checked, there was in 1948.

The book was cover dated February 1949, so probably came out at the end of 1948. Still after the Olympics, but, at least, the same year.

As some cartoon character used to say, 'Very Interesting. but Stupid."

Wasn't that Artie Johnson as Seigrfried on Laugh-In?

26 mile dash!
Also, The text states, 'It was some 25 miles to Athens' A contradiction?

As I understand it 25 miles was the length of the Marathon until an Olympics in London where they extended it so the Royal Family could see the race start, or something like that. Been too long since I heard the explanation.

[Robb_K]

There would not have been a games in 1949, but I checked, there was in 1948.

The book was cover dated February 1949, so probably came out at the end of 1948. Still after the Olympics, but, at least, the same year.

As some cartoon character used to say, 'Very Interesting. but Stupid."

Wasn't that Artie Johnson as Seigrfried on Laugh-In?

26 mile dash!
Also, The text states, 'It was some 25 miles to Athens' A contradiction?

As I understand it 25 miles was the length of the Marathon until an Olympics in London where they extended it so the Royal Family could see the race start, or something like that. Been too long since I heard the explanation.

True Comics 73

The Amazing Story of Walt Disney
I liked this concise biography, which covers the most important events and milestones of his career.  They should have mentioned the names of his award-winning films, as well as the fact that Charles Mintz was the man who "stole" Disney's staff and cheated him out ofthe rights to use his own created characters, including "Oswald, The Lucky Rabbit".  But, maybe Walt Disney Productions, who gave this publisher permission to depict their copyrighted characters, told them NOT to refer to those old characters and the related legal difficulties.  Those drawings of the early Disney comics characters look like the artwork of 1940s artists artists
from Thre Disney Animation Studio, as well as their Comics Department (who worked on the newspaper comic strips, and also for their Western Publishing/Dell Comics books.  I think Donald Duck was drawn by Riley Thompson, Mickey, Minnie and Morty Mouse and Pluto Pup were drawn by Bill Wright, and Goofy was drawn by Dick Moores.  The biography was very truthful, straightforward, and neutral - I sensed no exaggeration, bias, or agenda.  Good reading and education for a kid who knew very little, if anything about the man who brought him or her that entertainment.

26 Mile Dash - An Event that is almost 2500 Years Old

It's very difficult to understand why the change from 25 miles to 26.2 miles just to accommodate The British Royals for the one London Olympics would be continued to be used in later Olympic Games.  In any case, the distance the original runner (who died of exhaustion) ran was quite a bit more than 26 miles, because he was supposed to have run from the battlefield to Athens, then to Sparta, and back from there to Athens.  But making HIM do that made no sense.  The Athenians should have sent a DIFFERENT runner to warn The Spartans.  In any case, the legend sounds as if it was exaggerated heavily, or, perhaps invented completely, with not even a kernel of truth.  Also, the route in the legend, along the coast is much longer.  The runner, in a great hurry, might well have chosen to run a shorter route across slightly higher terrain, but cutting off a decent portion of the distance.  It's very arbitrary, as no one alive in 1896 really knew how far the runner actually ran (even if the story is based on a true event). 

Interesting tidbit about the Italian runner who collapsed in exhaustian, and was helped up by officials, to be able to finish The Marathon race.  I never knew about that.  Good that he was disqualified from being considered the "winner".  That wouldn't have been fair to the runners who needed no help.

[The Australian Panther]

Scrounge said,

Wasn't that Artie Johnson as Seigrfried on Laugh-In?

I think you have it!
Beware! I might use that a lot now.

[Robb_K]

Whiz Comics 29

Captain Marvel at The Pan-American Olympics
Interesting that there had been a Pan-American Games scheduled for 1942, but they were cancelled due to USA and Canada's participation in World War II.  But this story was likely written before the official announcemen of the cancellation, and because the books are sent to the distributors a full 2 months before their listed shelf date, they were likely sent out to distributors before that announcement.  So these books became an even more desirable collectors' item, due to that fact.

Billy Batson, in his radio newscasting job, announces the signing of the agreement for The Pan-American Games to be held later that year (1942).  Nazi spies working in USA hear the announcement, and plan to interfere in those Games, to try to foment theripping apart of existing or planned alliances between the participating governments.  The "REAL" Billy Batson sends off messages to "Tall Billy Batson", "Hill Billy Batson", and "Fat Billy Batson", asking them to come to a meeting.  The Captain Marvel family keeps getting bigger.  Why wasn't "Hoppy The Marvel Bunny" called?  So, Billy Batson has a personal cook, "Steamboat" (patterned, no doubt, after The Spirit's sidekick, Ebony White).  Is "Fat Billy Batson" the precursor of ACG's Herbie and Fatman?

Sabotaging The Games by planting a live grenade inside a boxer's boxing glove???  It won't explode until he strikes his opponent with his glove??? Very dramatic, but too unlikely to work as planned.  Putting live bullets in the swimming races' starter's starting gun.  He'd shoot the gun straight up into the air.  The bullet would not likely hit a person.  It would only drop after losing all it's velocity, and so, EVEN if it were to land on a person, it wouldn't have the weight nor force behind it, to penetrate human skin.  It would be like a few grams worth small blank bullet falling softly (harmlessly) onto someone's body part.  Latev it is revealed that one of the spies got the job as the swimming events gun shooter (so he plans to shoot directly at the swimmers, and kill as many as he can.  I wonder why the spies think such a tragedy will turn participating governments against each other, and break their military alliances?

Wow!!!  Captain Marvel refers to World Champion boxer, Joe Louis (The Brown Bomber) as The Bomber, and he is portrayed with the large pink area around his lips, looking like an Ape face.  Louis should have been able to sue Fawcett Publishing for slander.

Interesting that on Page 14 2nd panel, it appears that the pole vaulter in the background has cleared the bar performing a Fosbury Flop (many years before it was invented and perfected).  Of course, Captain Marvel stops the villain from detonating his powerful bomb that was planned to cause an explosion that would destroy the entire track and field stadium.  Captain Marvel tells the athletes to assault the spies and punish them physically.  Funny scene in which the hammer-thrower hurls a spy on a long trajectory, finally crossing over the high jump bar (for a field goal)!     Another one shows the very strong-looking women track and field athletes tossing heavy sports equipment at the fleeing spies' heads, including the discus thrower's discus hitting a spy's head in full flight and bouncing off quite high.  Should have, at least. knocked him unconscious, if not killed him.  The Captain Marvels display their athletic prowess, broad jumping onto spies' backs, head-buttinjg them inton the sky, hurling them into the air, and finally, symbolically, tossing the 2 head conspiritors into the Official Pan-American Games trophy case.

The final message speech by Captain Marvel to The Western Hemisphere athletes thanking them for fighting against people who were trying to fight unfairly seems to be missing the point a little.  They were fighting against people who were trying to murder people, causing countries' people to mistrust their current allies so they won't be able to defend themselves as a strong bulwark against the aggressive fascist nations, who aim to conquer The World.

[Quirky Quokka]

Re Snapper Carr on the Worst Sidekicks list, SuperScrounge said:

9. Snapper Carr - Justice League
While Snapper was a bit of an odd choice to put in the comic I think writer Gardner Fox did have a larger plan for him in the first 20 or so JLA stories that got scuttled when DC wanted Superman & Batman to have a larger role in the JLA. First off, Snapper was the only character that Fox could actually write without interference, all the others being on loan from other books. Second Snapper was being trained to eventually be some kind of hero, one early story having him use some gadgets in the JLA trophy room so he could save the League. When Fox quit, new writer Denny O'Neil didn't want to deal with Snapper, had him betray the League and kicked him out

.

And Morgus said:

SNAPPER CARR   MAYBE Manyard G Krebs would have been worse. But Snapper was really annoying,daddy-o...

My only experience of Snapper is the facsimile issue of the first book Justice League had on their own (Nov 1960, I think), in a 5-part story called 'World of No Return'. The Flash, Wonder Woman, Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, Aquaman and  J'ohn J'onzz are all whizzed off to different worlds where they're going to be destroyed by Despero. Snapper hides in Despero's Dimensional Traveller and is able to zap him with an energy-absorbing machine that looks a bit like a ray gun. Hip dialogue like: 'You're a real Bad Dad, Despero. I'm gonna queer your game!' I really liked the book as a whole. Maybe Snapper was included to appeal to those cool kids, though he's not desperately needed for the story.

Cheers

QQ

[Quirky Quokka]

The Amazing Story of Walt Disney
I liked this concise biography, which covers the most important events and milestones of his career.  They should have mentioned the names of his award-winning films, as well as the fact that Charles Mintz was the man who "stole" Disney's staff and cheated him out ofthe rights to use his own created characters, including "Oswald, The Lucky Rabbit".  But, maybe Walt Disney Productions, who gave this publisher permission to depict their copyrighted characters, told them NOT to refer to those old characters and the related legal difficulties.  Those drawings of the early Disney comics characters look like the artwork of 1940s artists artists
from Thre Disney Animation Studio, as well as their Comics Department (who worked on the newspaper comic strips, and also for their Western Publishing/Dell Comics books.  I think Donald Duck was drawn by Riley Thompson, Mickey, Minnie and Morty Mouse and Pluto Pup were drawn by Bill Wright, and Goofy was drawn by Dick Moores.  The biography was very truthful, straightforward, and neutral - I sensed no exaggeration, bias, or agenda.  Good reading and education for a kid who knew very little, if anything about the man who brought him or her that entertainment.

Thanks for the extra info on the Walt Disney story, Robb. I didn't know a lot of that background and I was wondering whether it was a good summary. Interesting story.

Cheers

QQ

[The Australian Panther]

Looking forward to hearing from gregjh tomorrow to substitute for Robb.

Cheers!

[Quirky Quokka]

Panther said:

Phantom Lady #22 (1949)

Has anybody noticed that the relationship between Don and Sandra Knight is reversed from the usual?
She's is the Superhero and he is the romantic interest who can't recognise Sandra even though she doesn't wear a mask. And he states in front of Sandra that he wishes she was more like Phantom Lady?
That's a trope that's usually Male Superhero, adoring but oblivious girlfriend, secretary, workmate.   
I enjoyed the story, but it seems just an excuse to get Sandra to be portrayed doing Olympic sports.
She competes in (the mens) foot race, High Jump, Boxing and Shotput. I thought she didn't have superpowers? So, was it only the men that drink water before competing?

   

It is interesting that the gender roles seem to be reversed. I've read some other Phantom Lady comics, and she seemed a bit narkier in this one. I felt a bit sorry for the boyfriend. And yes, I was wondering too how she managed to excel at all those sports, as I don't think she has any superpowers. She just has her black box.

True Stories

The text piece by Robert Ryan. Now that's a find.
I'm a movie buff and have come to realize that he was very choosy about which films he would make, and if you see his name on a film, you will never be disappointed.
The film he talks about was 'Berlin Express' I also love Train Movies. I'll have to find a copy.
It's not on YouTube but here is a review. Exactly the kind of project you find Robert Ryan involved in.

I probably wouldn't have read that one if Super and Morgus hadn't mentioned it. I'm a movie buff too, but I'm not very familiar with him, so thanks for the extra info. A rare find indeed.

Cheers

QQ

[Quirky Quokka]

Re whiz Comics, Robb said:

Wow!!!  Captain Marvel refers to World Champion boxer, Joe Louis (The Brown Bomber) as The Bomber, and he is portrayed with the large pink area around his lips, looking like an Ape face.  Louis should have been able to sue Fawcett Publishing for slander.

Hi Robb - I was thinking they'd drawn the boxer in a very stereotyped way, but I didn't realise that it was meant to be Joe Louis. Given the date of publication, I wonder if the artist thought he was actually paying homage to Louis? Though today of course we would regard drawings like that as racist (and similarly with Steamboat, as mentioned previously). I looked up Louis and there's an interesting bit of trivia on Wikipedia that said he 'was also a focal point of anti-Nazi sentiment leading up to and during World War II because of his historic rematch with German boxer Max Schmeling in 1938'.

The final message speech by Captain Marvel to The Western Hemisphere athletes thanking them for fighting against people who were trying to fight unfairly seems to be missing the point a little.  They were fighting against people who were trying to murder people, causing countries' people to mistrust their current allies so they won't be able to defend themselves as a strong bulwark against the aggressive fascist nations, who aim to conquer The World

.

Maybe missing the point, but it's interesting how superheroes were used to help in the war effort. I have a volume of Superman's war stories and it's interesting how they were used in a positive way (encouraging people to buy bonds and recycle things for the war effort), but also to stir up anti-German and anti-Japanese sentiment.

Cheers

QQ

[Quirky Quokka]

Hi everyone

Thanks for all of your comments. I've already said a few things in reply to others, so I'll just make a few comments here.

First of all, I'd like to award joint gold medals to SuperScrounge and Morgus for reading all of the stories in all three comics. You've performed well above requirements and deserve the accolades of your peers.

I'd like to award joint silver medals to Robb for picking out that the boxer in the Captain Marvel story was Joe Louis and to Panther for the extra links on the Robert Ryan story. Will have to try to find the movie.

Phantom Lady #22

I know that artists will sometimes do variations on a theme and use similar poses etc from their archives. But I couldn't help notice that the cover pic of Phantom Lady is almost exactly the same as that on Issue 19, which I had downloaded a while ago. I kept clicking on the wrong one when I was doing this fortnight's reading. I would have thought that was too small of a time interval in which to have such a similar cover.

Here's the cover of #22 that we've been looking at:



And here's the cover of #19:



Others have already pointed out the numerous plot holes and unbelievable scenarios, even for a book of this nature. Like Panther, I wondered how come Phantom Lady somehow excelled at every sport, with no preparation, when she doesn't have superpowers (at least not that I know of).

The art was really good, but I didn't think the story was as good as some of her others. She also seemed to have a harder edge to her character than in some other stories. Though it is good to see a female hero from this era. She was still one of the best, in my opinion.

True Comics #73

Some interesting info in the Marathon story, though as others have pointed out, it's probably hard to pinpoint the exact length of the original one.

I also read a few of the others in this one. I did the Sky Quiz and got 14 out of 15. I would have gotten full marks, except I thought one of them was a trick question Also, I guessed what answer they wanted for Q13, but I think they're wrong. I don't think it's the 10 moons around Saturn that give the appearance of rings. A fairly recent theory is that it was one huge moon that was torn apart.

https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/how-saturn-got-its-rings

But when they were writing this story, we didn't have satellites and planet fly-bys, so it was no doubt the common view at the time.

I didn't know a lot about Walt Disney's background, so I enjoyed reading that one. And as others have noted, the Robert Ryan story was a nice surprise. Not your typical celebrity story.

Whiz Comics #29

I wasn't familiar with the other Billy Batsons. They were a bit corny, but probably humorous at the time. It was interesting to learn of the Pan-Am games that were supposed to occur in 1948, and probably prompted this story. Some good art. Interesting underwater shot with shaded outlines (p. 16), but a shame that the African-American characters were so stereotyped.

All in all, I enjoyed these selections and learned some new things. Thanks everyone for your comments.

Cheers

QQ