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[MarkWarner]

Christmas and New Year are officially over, and the reading group has much work to do this year! We start with this issue, which I bumped across. I found it rather intriguing and thought hey HG Wells and JK Rowling made a few bucks out of it so maybe an "invisible book" might prove a hit for us here! I also promise to try really hard not to make a bunch of bad puns on my review, but I am pretty sure a few will slip in.   

The Invisible Boy can be found at: https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=19048, and the story we are concentrating on is the first one that explains it all "The Secret Formula".

[SuperScrounge]

The Secret Formula - The professor has the secret to alchemy, but he just uses it to impress kids??? Ah, the old "one thing you must never touch" trope. How does breathing fumes turn his clothes visible? Well, aside from the nitpicking an okay origin story.

The Impossible Can Happen - Interesting.

Terror In The Streets - Eh, okay.

Accidents That Changed The World! - Interesting.

Magic Manners - Okay.

Abe Lincoln's Star - Interesting.

A-Haunting We Shall Go! - Amusing.

A generally entertaining book. I can believe that Jerry Seigel was probably the writer. The writing had a very Supermannish vibe to it.

[crashryan]

This comic was no great shakes but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would. You have to approach it from the point-of-view of a boy just hitting puberty. It's a not-so-popular kid's wish-fulfillment fantasy. Especially the "manners" story. From an ethical standpoint it's indefensible, but I still remember when I would have loved to have been able to pull stunts like that and show up the smooth, popular kid.

The dramatic Saunders cover and its blurbs ("Death Stalks the Night!" "Terror in the Streets!") set up unrealistic expectations. Despite a lot of shooting the stories are simple and unthreatening. The action scenes are played for laughs and they're worth a chuckle or two. The artwork runs in the same vein. It's vaguely reminiscent of Beck-Costanza shop work, though not as slickly drawn. One odd thing is that the kids' heads are too big. It's like the artist knew that children's heads are larger in proportion to their bodies than adults' heads, but he overdid it.

The scripts have their naive moments, like the head saboteur calling himself "Comrade." Why didn't he just name himself "Evil Commie"? I was relieved though that the writer doesn't waste a lot of time on the tiresome Commie stereotypes that slow down so many Cold War comics stories. I wonder why none of the crooks guess an invisible person is involved. Have they never gone to the movies? But then, criminals are a cowardly, superstitious lot.

Two random thoughts: What is the origin of the stereotype that all criminals wear cloth caps--did it predate silent films? Is there any truth at all to those "impossible" events, or the Lincoln star, or Bell figuring out the telephone by mistranslating German?

LATER: I couldn't resist Googling those events and found references to all of them. The Bell claim is literally true, but its meaning is nuanced: the German was describing transmitting sound through resonators and tuning forks, but Bell thought he meant transmitting sound through a wire. This set Bell upon the line of experimentation which led to the telephone. The other incidents show up mostly in lists of odd events. Little effort is given to trying to explain them. The "Devil's Footprints" has an interesting entry in Wikipedia. The darkness over Oshkosh is quoted on a religion site as an early warning that the world is going to Hell, but I found no other attempt to explain it.

[Mazzucchelli]

The cover started me with high expectations. Dramatic scene, even more dramatic (and misleading) strapline at the top of the cover and a very good title logo and typeface.

Even the invisible boy being secondary in the scene, and being barely seen seems to work for me (I suppose when the comic was pristine brand new, on the newsstand in 1954, you could see much better the invisible boy hidden in the dark.)

The comic itself is good, entertaining, but perhaps it

[narfstar]

The cover is more mature than the origin story. The story would have been could for a pre-teen but not much older. A fun story if taken from that perspective.

[paw broon]

Nice wee comic, this.  Never knew there was such a title. 
The cover is impressive, looking, as it does, somewhat like a pulp cover. The interiors in no way ressemble the atmospheric cover but I do love that sort of accidental origin - it's  The Flash all over again.  The spin Mazzucchelli puts on Danny's actions, or the reasons for them, interest me and I can understand his points, but this is a  young lad and were I him, I'd be doing all I could to get back on that chanty rassler with the specs.  He isn't playing fair, so it's only fair (see what I did there)? that he gets done himself.  As for the machine gun, well, I suppose he could have chucked one of the bombs out the window, but he had  a couple of seconds, what else? Shout? A disembodied voice? Sorry, just being a bit silly here.
This was good, not quite innocent, fun all round.  Basic, simple, reasonably well done and I liked the wee fellow.
The thing about having a super power brings back memories of me as a primary school kid, wrapped up in the adventures of Ace Hart and Marvelman, and walking to school, shouting, Kimota, wondering why I there was no explosion of energy and I didn't change into the mightiest man in the universe. Still haven't.

[bowers]

I, too, had never heard of this character and found him to be a nice surprise.
Once the secret formula was revealed to Danny, I felt certain he would he would try to sneak some. The accidental dose he received worked much better and gave us a new hero.
One of my favorite aspects of this book was that Danny is portrayed as a kid and not a mini-adult. He has a lot of fun with his power, whether he's bashing Commies, humiliating his rival, or out-spooking the spooks.
Also very nice fillers and a great cover.
Written for the preteen male reader, I'm surprised he only lasted one issue. I would have loved and bought this comic. Cheers, Bowers

[MarkWarner]

Although it is rather battered, the cover with the Norman Saunders painting really whets the appetite. This looks like it's going to be a quality read!

Leapin' Leopards! 2 Space Phones for a buck. You can transmit messages, music, songs and SPACE-O-GRAMS. They are not merely toys and you get a FREE TOP-SECRET SPACE-O-GRAM CODE which will baffle grown-ups!

Next up the main feature! First comment, Grand Comics Database has all the Invisible Boy stories marked as "script: Jerry Siegel?". So a