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Pep Comics 22 (1941)

(1) The Shield with Dusty (The Spectacular Boy Detective)
The Shield seems to be another Superman Clone, with Dusty as his boy sidekick, to give boy readers someone who could provide vicarious thrills and a boy could imagine doing what Dusty does in the stories much more easily than being able to do what The Shield does.  This is a spy story. German agents have captured a Latin American ambassador to USA, to affect the wording of an international treaty, by replacing him with a lookalike double that they murdered, so no one would be looking for him.  Then, they planned to torture him until he'd agree to tell them what was written in their proposed military treaty.  Of course The Shield and Dusty free the ambassador from The Germans and hold them for the police.

I had to laugh at the so-called German spy who threatened to make "Wiener-Schnitzels" out of a dog.  Many Americans think of a "wiener" as a long, thin hot dog/sausage.  Why they call a Dachshund a "Wiener Dog" (which was the origin of the American phrase "Hot Dog".  But "Wiener Schnitzel" is a Vienna style meat dish made with a panfried veal cutlet.  It is not a sausage type meat dish.  The Viennese sausage dish is "Wiener Würstchen", which is quite different.  Wiener just means ""Viennese" (from or belonging to Vienna).

(2) The Hangman
This was a continuing story which had already started in previous issues.  I like this artist's use of many different camera angles to set the mood and provide a better feel for the setting locations.  The story concludes with The Hangman catching up with the villains escaping on a ship to South America.  The action scenes were drawn well.  I don't like the colouring much, but I do like the contrast of lighter and darker hues.

(3) Danny in Wonderland
This is more a younger child's fantasy series. We come in on a continuing story that started in previous issues.  Danny, the elder (protagonist) and Kuppie, the younger, smaller, sidekick, are travelling in Wonderland, and come across a master puppeteer, Spumoni, whose puppets are living, shrunken people. The Evil Spumoni has a "shrinking liquid"that can shrink living things.  He captures children and gullible teenagers, by shrinking them, and does that also to the curious Kuppie.  The action scenes of the fight between Danny and Spumoni inside his caravan horse cart are excellently drawn.  There is too much yellow, orange and red colouring (perhaps due to lack of availability of blue at that time, or just to keep production cost down. As could be predicted, Danny pours the shrinking liquid on Spumoni, who shrinks until he disappears.  Danny returns the shrunken people to their homes, knowing they'll grow back to normal size without daily being doused with the liquid.  This is a typical young children's fantasy story from the early 1940s.

(4) Sergeant Boyle - Detective
Is this character a combination mercenary/soldier of fortune and detective?  Interesting that he has a comedic sidekick named "Twerp".  Boyle is besmitten by a beautiful client, and they go to unoccupied wartime France to rescue her father from prison.  I have a lot of trouble seeing rocky red-coloured hills, with absolutely no vegetation, in southern France.  The action scenes looked very good.  The portrayal of The German soldiers was good, and comical.  It all happened too fast, which is a problem of having to be told in so few pages in relatively short 8-page episodes, in a book with 6 or 7 episodic feature stories.  I like that The French local painted The letter "V" (for "Victoire") on the back of The German Captain's Jeep.  The way The French locals behaved reminded me of The British TV sitcom, " 'Allo, 'Allo". Interesting that the beautiful young client jilted Boyle for his rival soldier colleague in the last epilogue panel.

(5) Jolly Roger and His Sky Pirates
Right away I'm perturbed by the fact that this American story has 4 protagonists who represent Scotland, USA (which only sent volunteers), "Britain", which also includes Scotland (maybe Scotland shouldn't have been separated from The UK?), and Australia, and they left out Canada, who sent long-term professionals, and wartime enlistees, and after The UK, sent, by far the most pilots to The RAF.  These four buddies are said to be the best pilots in The RAF.  And they are separated into 4 different flyer squadrons.  The panels portraying their dogfights with German Luftwaffe fighters are excellent.  During the spitfire's effort to stop The German convoy of bombers on its way to bomb southern England, the 4 "Sky Pirates" communicate with each other to leave their own squadrons' formations, and join together to fight in their own new formation - a punishable offence (disobeying orders)!  They knock out several German planes, and send the surviving planes back towards The Continent, in retreat in disarray.  When they return to their hangars they are commended and told that they have been assigned to have their own squadron, together, until the end of The War.

(6) Archie
I must say that I've always liked the earliest several years of Archie better than the stories from the late 1950s and early '60s.  Maybe I'm more nostalgic for "The old days" (my young years).  The Archie strip started roughly about the same time as "Wilbur".  Both of whom were teenaged boys who meant well, but were always getting into trouble.  But Archie had much more personality and much wider developed character, and had first one, and soon after, two regular "love interests" , who also became well-developed characters fairly quickly, as did Archies parents, schoolteacher, school principal, malt shop manager/owner, and even other secondary characters (sort of like "The Simpsons", whereas Wilbur, his girlfriend, and parents and other characters in his series were never developed enough to be likeable. 

This story is basically his introduction story, and mainly based on slapstick, physical gags, and showing that he's likeable, honest, but a bit flighty and not so responsible, and he likes Betty, but can easily get distracted from her, because he is still young (maybe first year in High School, while, by the early 1950s, he acted more like senior year in High School.  This story is not very funny, but okay as an introduction story.

(7) Kayo Ward - (Heavyweight Boxer)
Kayo Ward, acting as a volunteer referee in a military boxing match, tries to keep one of the boxers from going AWOL and ruining his career.  He breaks his wrist trying to bring the boxer back, which jeopardizes his own status for his own scheduled fight.  A moral tale with a message.  Kayo helps keep Crummy out of trouble for leaving his duty.  Later, Crummy helps save Kayo's career, and takes his place in a fight because Kayo has a broken wrist.  So, Kayo helps Crummy in his career.  A bit "preachy".

(8} Bentley of Scotland Yard
This story about a lake reptile "monster" has a great opening Splash Panel, with the monster rising out of the water and capsizing a boat. I'm wondering why the townsfolk by the lake called a detective to investigate  a man being "captured" by a lake "monster", described as a "sea serpent".  Did they think it might have been a disguised mechanical machine used to hide committing murders and, possibly other crimes?  Now comes the quiz narrative!  It's a "Whodunit? story.  It was fairly obvious, that some of the locals thought that a "real" sea serpent in a small lake was preposterous, and so, it must have been a machine built by a murderer with an agenda regarding their town.  So, they sent for a detective, rather than a zoologist or herpetologist.  I love the design of the "monster" and its poses.  And I was entertained by the story, too.

The upload is on the site and can be downloaded, but it can't be read on the site - the pages don't appear.
I noticed that other issues are in .zip format - should I change to that? Or could it be because of the conversion from .pdf?

I don't know what the parameters for whatever makes the uploaded files into pages that can be read on the site, but this is what works for me:

• Convert all pages to .jpg (your conversion site may be able to do this)
• Compress all the .jpgs into a .zip archive
• Change the extension of the zipped file from .zip to .cbz
• Use the Upload page to upload the .cbz file

Hope this helps!

Back to comics - the 3rd-last and last Comics on Parade all-Capt and the Kids issues (52 & 59); both complete
The ifc, ibc & bc of #52 are from assorted eBay auctions, so are lesser quality.

This issue should've been vol 39 #1 (the next one has the same problem - it says vol 38 #6 but should be vol 39 #2). The following 2 issues are correctly vol 39 #s 3&4.
They're numbered from Jan each year, with three 4-issue volumes.

Link to the comment: The Smart Set v38 5

QQ, Thanks for the verification.
No disrespect to you - but this article is not entirely correct.
The artists on the Archie masthead book were,

the 'house style' that Archie Comics incorporated, first introduced by Bob Montana, updated and modernized by Harry Lucey, then streamlined and perfected by Dan DeCarlo.

Of the three the one that wows me most was Harry Lucey. It's not pointed out here,
https://boards.cgccomics.com/blogs/entry/4998-archie-comics-95-classic-artists-of-the-era/
but he was the Jack Kirby of Teenager comics, in that, his work had such energy it seemed to jump off the page. Great slapstick.
There was also Samm Schwartz who defined Jughead in the 60's and 70's and whose work can be seen on CB+ in the Tower 'Tippy Teen' comics. I love artists who have their own unmistakable visual style which makes you look for more.
Also slapstick.

he also liked to draw in his own gags or even silent mini-stories in the background. His scenes in the hall of Riverdale High School often feature explosions, pratfalls and other mishaps by characters who aren't directly involved in the story, and Edwards was particularly fond of a gag where Schwartz made it look like Mr. Weatherbee was making a rude gesture at a portrait on his office wall.[ 

Samm Schwartz
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samm_Schwartz
cheers! 

The upload is on the site and can be downloaded, but it can't be read on the site - the pages don't appear.
I noticed that other issues are in .zip format - should I change to that? Or could it be because of the conversion from .pdf?

Thanks for flying the flag for female leads, Goof.  I'll look forward to reading these.

Cheers

Quirky Quokka

My thanks to Panther for giving me the chance to flag up a couple of stories that have impressed me. I don’t know that the selections have any very clear overall theme, other than that they are all stories where the girls take the lead, and are (perhaps for that reason?) unduly neglected.

My interest is mainly in girls’ titles for the 8-13 age range, but I’ve put in one from outside this genre because it’s from a series which I think is top-notch quality, but undervalued.

I was first drawn into this field by a passion for the power, variety and originality of a lot of the artists, many of whom are barely known except to a few enthusiasts, and some of whom are still unnamed. That’s very much reflected in these choices, and I suppose that the unexpected quality of the art is another binding thread.

Schoolgirls’ Picture Library 76
Loyal to Her Disgraced Mother

This is a recent discovery for me thanks to this site, and is a good example of the tougher type of early girls’ school story. Misery or misfortune was the almost inevitable lot of girls’ comic heroines, but while these earlier stories usually followed a fairly standard line in adversity (typically, girl with/without her family embarks on some venture which a villain tries to sabotage), there was a vein of much harder stories which really ground the heroine into the dirt. In the most extreme of these, you would find her on the last page but three defeated at every turn, stripped of family, friends and reputation, and (the ultimate disgrace) expelled from school and awaiting departure in a “punishment room” indistinguishable from a prison cell. 

This story scores about seven on ten on this scale. The heroine has to contend with a completely ruthless adversary who blocks her every move in trying to clear her mother’s name from a theft charge, and save herself from a similar fate. She fights tooth and nail against her enemy, and does have help from one loyal friend, but this doesn’t rescue her from a pretty grim downward spiral of events until she is able turn the tables on the villain at the very last moment.

What I think sets this story apart from others of its kind is the unusually dark and menacing art, from a rather improbable source. Pat Tourret is best known for the elegantly crafted Tiffany Jones newspaper strip, and those of you who know it may find this early example of her work pretty startling – intense basilisk stares, bold heavy cross-hatching and some dramatic deep black shadowing take us beyond the conventional school drama into the realm of the horror story. If Miss Molsey were to suddenly sprout a pair of fangs, it wouldn’t much surprise us. Read and shudder…

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=60270

Schoolgirls’ Picture Library 143
Dancer in Hiding (never mind the typo in the post title)

It wouldn’t be a post about girls’ comics without a ballet story, and this is a good one. The plot is fairly true to a formula that I’ve seen several times - mystery teacher coaches girl troupe in new ballet, villain tries to stop them. But I think it’s well told and strongly characterised, and has two distinguishing features; a quirky, just-about-believable ending, and some of the most beautiful art in the entire SPL series, by an artist who has resisted every attempt at identification. He/she was a regular SPL contributor during these early years, and further examples can be seen in numbers 16, 37, 78, 82, 86, 108, 111 and 142. This story, for me, is the best of them.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=95970

Super Detective Library 45
Lesley Shane: Crime from the Sky

Lesley Shane may be a bit too well known to readers for her to be worth highlighting here, but this is the series that introduced me to Super Detective, and is one of my personal favourites among 1950’s detective yarns. Hopefully, this post may help spread the word a little further.

It was originally published as a newspaper strip in the Daily Sketch, where it ran for about three years in the early 1950’s, and edited reprints of these stories provided most of the series issued by Super Detective - including this one, which was originally called “Joker in the Pack”.

Lesley wasn’t the only female gumshoe, and she may look a little conventional in post-Modesty Blaise hindsight, but for me she stood out from any others of her time. Strong-willed, crack shot, combat trained and quite unmoved by her rather male chauvinist CID fiancé’s occasional attempts to “protect” her, she was as much an action adventurer as a crime solver, and many issues in this series aren’t really detective stories at all.

This story is probably one of the less typical of the series. It’s a mixture, combining crime-busting in an exotic location with some heavy-duty action that recalls the War Libraries as much as most detective genres. I particularly like the mix of murky crime with satirical humour, both in the depiction of the villain and his gangster cronies, and Lesley’s hair-raising predicament at the end. But the standard of the whole series is very high, and I could just as easily have picked any one of a dozen other issues. If you like this one, here’s some suggested further reading that gives a feel for the range of the series: #51 “The Mystery of Table 13” (a cold war detective thriller), or #39 “The Stolen Crown” (a desert kingdom adventure with Lesley in full action mode).

As always with me, the art plays a big part. I don’t personally buy the view I’ve heard expressed that Oliver Passingham was just an Alex Raymond clone. Sure, he learned a lot from Raymond – who didn’t, around this time? But he had a strongly distinctive style of his own that was well adapted to noirish underworld stories of this kind, and would later be very effective in the younger girls’ comics, both in spooky/horror stories and grotesque comedy.

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=74054

Pep Comics 22 (1941)
Archie.
Is this actually the very first Archie story? Anybody know?

Hi Panther

Yes, this is their first appearance. Here's an article on the evolution of Archie:

https://www.vox.com/culture/2017/1/26/13149304/archie-comics-riverdale-evolution

Cheers

QQ

Useful post, Paw.

I have now seen many of these but not all.

cheers!