[MarkWarner]

I thought last week's book was just plain "wacky", jaw droppingly so! It was a great call from the apparition at my window. This week's book is one from the "list", but I am not sure that is written in my hand, so maybe, just maybe, our spirit has chosen another one.

This will be our 99th book ... I have NO IDEA what next week's book will be so suggestions for our big anniversary read PLEASE!

So our last double digits book is Super-Mystery Comics v2 #2, the story is the first one "The Clown Comes Back" featuring Magno the Magnetic Man https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=23787.

[SuperScrounge]

The Clown Comes Back - Magno and... Davey? What, the writers couldn't be bothered to give him a fancy name? The Clown takes one look at a sick gorilla an immediately knows he has a rare jungle disease? Otherwise an entertaining romp.

The Black Spider - Evidence? We don' need no stinkin' evidence! Arrest the accused an' assume guilt! And the writer doesn't even try to be clever and have someone else be guilty. Ugh.

Vulcan - Star Trek? ;-) What there was of the story wasn't bad. A bit over the top, which seems normal for the Golden Age. ;-)

Pee Wee Wilson - Another incomplete one. Coulda dun wit'out thet thair suthern akcent, but otherwise an okay story.

Sky Smith - Nice.

Buckskin - Secret identity, Robert Blake... any relation to Bob Blake aka Hydroman? Okay story.

Crossword Crime - Okay.

Capt Gallant - Okay.

[Morgus]

Lot of fun. Art reminded me of the kind of stuff you'd find after THE SPIRIT feature story...But to me, "Davey" looks like a chic on the front cover.

[paw broon]

What a lot of silly, enjoyable nonsense.  I love these colourfully clad superheroes and to an extent that makes up for the poor stories.  M&D v. The Clown, again.  This should be good but The Clown is at times a deluded killer and really often fails. Not that I want him to kill more, you understand.  He has absolutely no saving graces but seems to know how to draw off the poison - just like that! So in some ways he is a perfect villain in the style of the huge threats which featured in early Spider pulp stories, just not very well written here.  As for the heroes' names, there is a bit of a fashion here, Magno and Davey, Black Terror and Tim, Catman and Kit, (that's the Australian version of the team before anyone corrects me) They are kid sidekicks and I've never been enamoured of them.  Magno's powers are a bit undefined and I was sure he could do other specific things but I can't get to my file cards and most of my digital comics right now to check.
My favourite story in this issue was the Black Spider, great name, eh?   Not that the story was that great but the author made the bad guys nasty and cowardly enough to let me really enjoy them.  getting their come-uppence.  The Black Spider was pulp like and I like that, and his costume.  Bit of a rip-off, perhaps. I watched the first Spider serial recently, so it's in my mind.
I'll have a read at the rest of this comic later, if I don't fall asleep again.

[narfstar]

The Clown was one of the more believable super villains. He was a down and out pure sociopath. He knew he was evil and doing wrong and liked it. He was not in anything for the money just he joy of killing. He invented degravitating solvent so could have gotten really rich. But he was not using it to rob banks to keep thousands when he could make millions. I think of Marvel's Wizard with his billion dollar anti grav discs that he uses to rob banks. Love the name degravitating solvent because of course dissolving gravity is the best way to fly. The disease diagnoses and with drawl from the ape were hard to take though. Great art and pretty neat story.

[paw broon]

Having read the rest of the book now I feel it went a bit downhill.  Pee Wee Wilson type strips do nothing for me.  Vulcan however should have appealed to me more, being a genuine superhero, albeit another Human Torch style character. But it's odd that he decides to have alook around Alaska, quickly finding the bad guys.  Perhaps another power, luck.  That's an awfy big coastline up there.  But I suppose it is a superhero comic, so I accepted it.  I liked the flame lassoo. Enjoyable enough but it's been done better elsewhere. 
Sky Smith was so so.  Nasty Nazis, good looking, capable, female agent in peril, but an unconvincing trick to confuse the Nazis.
Buckskin, yet another obscure superhero, or perhaps a costumed mystery man, as he doesn't appear to have any powers.  It was ok.  And again with the nasty Nazis, slapping the young kids and generally being horrible.
The ibc ad was interesting and I'm glad the wee bloke went for his comic rather than going to the circus.  I'd have done that. No brainer as I don't like circuses. 

[MarkWarner]

I have just noticed that this book is missing the centrefold. I hope that this will not spoil my reading pleasure too much.

Our main story Magno the Magnetic Man has really great artwork, but is cheese. In fact it is cheese, stuffed with cheese on a bed of cheese with a cheese topping. Crippled children, crying women, clown villains and an evil ape. it has them all!

"All the kids from the home for crippled children are here. It's good to see them enjoying themselves"

A weeping woman: "You are so brave. I ... I ... feel better already"

The Black Spider shows that skulduggery in motor racing has been going a long time! With the missing centerfold I skimmed the Vulcan story, which looked rather good. I thought ir rather ironic that Peewee Wilson story which is missing its first page starts the second with " ... He's got me plumb curious ... " And so am I. It was not bad at all.   

Next is Sky Wilson. I thought it rather interesting that the spies are in South America in a 1941 comicbook. I didn't realize that Nazis were associated with that area during the war years. Or is this just a coincidence that I shouldn't read too much into? Of course we had to have the "There are ways of making you obey". But, blimey that was a rather bizarre bit when Rita Laverne of Pan-American intelligence appears from behind a moving wall.

This is followed by Buckskin who looks like a standard patriotic Superhero. And after reading I can confirm he is, with an extra dose of patriotism: "Hooray! It's Buckskin America's defender of liberty..." etc etc yawn ..... It's a pity that the missing pages weren't in this story!

Two page text story had a minor twist and was okish. Captain Gallant and his Mini-Sub was patronizing and I'd have considered it mildly offensive if it wasn't so mediocre (if that makes sense). Circus Days on our page 67 is a really cool advertisement for Lightning Comics. Very well done!

Verdict: It had its ups and downs (and was heading downhill!), but still manages to scramble a hit. And if anyone has those four missing pages contact Movielover or Yoc at DCM. I'd love to read the Vulcan story!

[bowers]

All in all not a bad comic, just sort of lacking originality. Entertaining, but really nothing new here.

The Clown reminded me a little of the early Joker but more psychotic and even sadistic. I cringed when he was mentally torturing the kid with a hypo. Definitely a baddie one loves to hate. I'm still a bit unclear as to what Magno's powers actually are. Pretty much all I saw was super-strength. The less said about Davey the better.

The other stories seemed to contain characters copied from better known comics. The Black Spider could have been inspired by the Shadow but more probably from The Avenger. Vulcan owed something to The Human Torch, and  Sky Smith was awfully similar to Smilin' Jack. The stories themselves were pretty good with good to fair art and well worth a dime. Just nothing new. Cheers, Bowers

[crashryan]

This is a pretty good cover. It would have pulled me in. I wonder why several companies used these tiny typeset blurbs rather than big hand-lettered captions that would stand out at the newsstand.

"Magno and Davey": Let me go on the record (again) saying that I hate kid sidekicks. They seem always to cramp the hero's style. Kid sidekicks usually are present to (1) get into trouble so the hero has to bail them out, (2) finish off what the hero started, like punching a fifth Nazi after the hero clobbers the other four, or (3) untie the hero when he has been overcome, which situation the hero could have dealt with solo by being clever or lucky.

That said, "The Clown Comes Back" is pretty intense. The Clown is a total psycho who has no problem with mass murder, torturing children, and (gasp!) kidnapping disabled orphans. I'll bet more than one kid got nightmares from that hypodermic panel. I enjoy several of the set-pieces, like Magno bronc-busting a lion and tossing a tiger by the tail. It makes up for hogwash like sucking poison from the ape for re-use at the Campbell's Soup factory. I love the friendly ape-hug on page 12. Considering that later in his career Jim Mooney became a skilled but very restrained artist, his dynamic action here comes as a surprise. Overall I like this story despite Davey's presence. And the number of testimonials from bystanders. Put me down for a couple of gallons of degravitating solvent, will you?

The Black Spider is a sort of Green Hornet type. The story is competently drawn, but it's uninteresting because there's no mystery. The manager says Niles and Gartz are guilty, The Black Spider agrees, and (spoiler) Niles and Gartz are guilty. Ho-hum. Of course in comics a name like "Gartz" pegs you as guilty right from the start.

"Vulcan" is a fun variation on The Human Torch. I enjoy his super-size heat stunts and his swim in the lava. However he's mighty cavalier about burning several men alive. I have trouble believing that a thug would respond to a flaming superhero unmasking him by saying, "Hey, that ain't cricket!"

The figure work on "PeeWee Wilson" is pretty good. Less so the perspective. The story suffers from PeeWee not having a distinctive appearance. Since all the guys are in uniform and all have the same build the villain differs from the hero only in that he wears a mustache. I enjoy PeeWee's logic when he finds Dakin is a spy: "Hit all matches up, Dakin bein' so good at drillin'!" Warning, soldiers: keep a sloppy formation or be taken for German spies.

"Spin Shaw" is a typical Golden Age flying hero. You can sure tell when Maurice Guitworth had reference from which to draw his plane, and when he didn't. Similarly it's fun to watch characters suddenly turn into Alex Raymond swipes (e.g. the Nazi chieftain in the last panel on our page 43).

"Buckskin" is of special interest because it's an early job by Harry Anderson, who over the next few years became incredibly good. It's hard to guess that from this example, although some of Anderson's stylistic traits are evident. A few shots of Bucky's eagle are rather approximate, but Anderson makes up for it with his malnourished glowing dogs. The story is okay despite cringeworthy lines like "It's Buckskin, America's Defender of Liberty!" Just like real kids would say. Isn't it odd that Nazi infiltrators would parade around America in full uniform? In stories featuring American spies in Germany, the spies don't wear U. S. Army fatigues. Whatever. It's the Golden Age.

In a series titled "Captain Gallant and his Mini-Sub" I expect to see a mini-sub! One clear shot and that appears to have been swiped from "Rex, King of the Deep." The colorist certainly earned his/her pay, drawing all those lines on Gallant's T-shirt. Another asbestos suit...wonder how many GA villains died of mesothelioma. It must be a sturdy suit, though--a powder keg blows up on his back and the nameless leader runs away with only a few tears. Mark Arthur Schneider was so proud of his work he signed it twice (though it should have read "Mark Arthur Schneider with Alex Raymond and Burne Hogarth"). Dig that bod on Peg-Leg! The old guy must belong to a gym.

The ads are interesting enough but what really piques my curiosity is the contest on the inside front cover. Custom-made original drawings given to three lucky kids. Talk about collectibles! Wonder if any survived. Or, for that matter, if the publisher ever actually gave them away.

[SuperScrounge]

Isn't it odd that Nazi infiltrators would parade around America in full uniform?

Yes.

On the other hand, during WWII, two reporters once dressed up in German uniforms and walked around New York City and no one bothered them, the police didn't question them, no one from the military tried to stop them...

What's the old saying? Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction has to make sense.