Print

[Robb_K]

Here's a comic book that's new to this website.   It's a comic book that I didn't know existed, not having paid attention to Boody Rogers' work when I first was introduced to comic books in the late 1940s, reading my elder cousins' early 1940s "hand-me-downs".  I only started reading "Sparky Watts" as an adult, and only had seen his stories in Columbia's "Big Shot" and its spinoff, "Sparky Watts Comics".  I hadn't known until a couple days ago, when this book was uploaded, that Columbia had its own "namesake" series (actually a one-shot).  So, I had never seen this particular "episode" in Sparky's story (history).

Here it is, complete with "Joe Palooka", a Charlie Chan mystery, "Captain Yank", "Dixie Dugan", "Hollywood  Husband" and Bo the Dog single-Sunday page gags, along with the Sparky Watts episode:  Enjoy it!

https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=76406

I will always choose the entire books to review.  If any of you want to read and review only one story from the book feel free to choose ANY of the stories (joe Palooka, Charlie Chan, Captain Yank, or Sparky Watts).

[Electricmastro]

Skyman was definitely one of Columbia

[SuperScrounge]

Joe Palooka - Interesting, but choppy. I wonder how many strips were left out as the flow of the story at the beginning wasn't smooth.

Sparky Watts - A little rough. I know that Sparky Watts started off as a newspaper strip before being done as a comic book feature, so I wonder if this was newspaper strips put together or if Boody was still using comic strip pacing when he wrote this?

Charlie Chan - An interesting story let down by the fact we know so much more about how hypnosis does and doesn't work these days.

Hollywood Husband - Not great. Looking up info on the artist I noticed that he was married to an actress (and did some acting himself) so I guess his own life was part inspiration for this strip.

Capt. Yank - Not a big war comic fan, but it's okay.

Dixie Dugan - Nothing laugh out loud, but amusing.

Bo - Ditto.

[Robb_K]

Joe Palooka - Interesting, but choppy. I wonder how many strips were left out as the flow of the story at the beginning wasn't smooth.

Sparky Watts - A little rough. I know that Sparky Watts started off as a newspaper strip before being done as a comic book feature, so I wonder if this was newspaper strips put together or if Boody was still using comic strip pacing when he wrote this?

Charlie Chan - An interesting story let down by the fact we know so much more about how hypnosis does and doesn't work these days.

Hollywood Husband - Not great. Looking up info on the artist I noticed that he was married to an actress (and did some acting himself) so I guess his own life was part inspiration for this strip.

Capt. Yank - Not a big war comic fan, but it's okay.

Dixie Dugan - Nothing laugh out loud, but amusing.

Bo - Ditto.

Boody Rogers stopped writing the "Sparky Watts" newspaper comic strip in late 1942, to join The US Army to serve in The War effort.  The daily strips had started being collected into 4-page stories in Columbia's monthly "Big Shot Comics" in issue No. 14 in mid 1941.  After 2 years, in mid 1943, the strips were collected into 6-page monthly episodes.  By issue 65 or so, in mid 1946, the newspaper strips were finished being printed.  Boody Rogers had returned from The Service in early 1946.  He continued drawing new "stories/episodes" specifically for "Big Shot Comics", which lasted to issue 104, in August, 1949.  The first 4 issues of Columbia's "Sparky Watts Comics" had been reprints of the newspaper strips.  But Rogers started drawing new stories for it after that, which took up the last 6 issues (through No. 10), which ran through 1949. 

The Columbia #1, one-shot issue was issued in mid 1943, so I would guess that it had come from the newspaper strips, as, as according to Rogers' bio, AND the 3 articles on the history of "Sparky Watts", Rogers didn't write and draw any episodes especially for comic books until 1946, after returning from The Service.  He had been in The Service for over a year when The Columbia issue came out.  It was unlikely he drew one, single, special episode for a comic book before leaving, and Columbia waited a whole year to print it.   However, it's staging and graphics setup doesn't look awkward, as if the format had been changed to fit the comic book large pages.

[Robb_K]

This thread has been up a week, and we've only had ONE review!!!  I guess I've made an unpopular choice.  I'd have thought a one-shot book (that might have been obscure, and little-known by several of our group members) containing Skyman, Charlie Chan, Captain Yank, and Sparky Watts stories, might be interesting.  Many people knew those characters, and also Joe Palooka, were in Columbia's "Big Shot Comics", but may not have known about Columbia's one-shot issue of "Columbia Comics".  So, these stories may be new to most of us (especially because they weren't available on DCM or Comic Book Plus.

I had also hoped to learn more about this one-shot "Columbia Comics" mid WWII (1943) experiment.  Why did Columbia feel the need to place stories by writers and artists that had been appearing in their main "showcase" magazine, "Big Shot Comics", in another book, with a similar format and page count? - And why did they abandon it after only one issue?  Did these stories also appear beforehand or afterwards in "Big Shot", or any other Columbia distributed comic book series?

[The Australian Panther]

Sometimes you need patience for this. I intend to respond, but not for at least a week.
I think it is an interesting choice - with a lot of possible areas to discuss.
Cheers! 

[The Australian Panther]

Columbia comics #1 was published in 1943. There seems to have been only #1 of this title. Copies go for around $400.00.
Titles publication information gives at times 'Publication Enterprises' and at other times 'Columbia Comics Corporation' or 'Magazine Enterprises', according to GCD, they only ever had 8 titles and lasted from 1943 to 1949.
Oddly Columbia comics corporation's best-known title was Big Shot comics and this is not listed by GCD.   

Columbia Comics was formed in 1940 as a partnership between artist/editor Vin Sullivan, the McNaught Syndicate, and the Frank Jay Markey Syndicate[2] to publish comic books featuring reprints of such McNaught and Markey comic strips as Joe Palooka, Charlie Chan, and Sparky Watts, as well as original features. Other properties published by Eastern Color Printing are also transferred to Columbia Comics. 

So that is the background. Since the company created a few original characters, like 'The Face' and 'Skyman' we can say the company was a hybrid between the early days of comics when the industry started by repackaging newspaper comics and when they eventually became mainly original books.
So lets look at the book.
Its always interesting to me to see how the editors shoehorn a comic strip, which can often run for months, into a book where the audience may not want part of a continued story.
Joe Palooka. This is a complete story, part of a longer road trip, which is a good device to add together many little adventures. This one is basically an ad for 'BoysTown' Ham Fisher was good at his craft and doesn't disappoint.
Sparky Watts. I can't believe this is the first Sparky Watts story I have ever read. If this is a typical episode, its very individual and idiosyncratic. He's like a maladroit combination of the Flash and Superman, in a suit and tie and checked pants. I don't really know what to say.
Charlie Chan Alfred Andriola's work is as good as ever. I find Charlie's bad english annoying. I note here that some of the time he can actually speak normally. When there is a sharp point to be driven home.  Again,we get a complete story, probably edited down from a longer one. 
Hollywood Husband by  Jefferson Machamer, Now here is a guy I want to see more of. Known for drawing 'glamorous women'. Say no more. And a true renaissance man too.
https://www.lambiek.net/artists/m/machamer_jefferson.htm
These two pages are obviously sundays. Ok, but probably nowhere near his best.
Capt Yank by Frank Tinsley.
https://www.pulpartists.com/Tinsley.html
An artist who specialized in the Aircraft stories of the day.
Another whole storylet, Jampacked with action. And the art is excellent. Its often not appreciated how much research goes into stories which have a lot of machinery, [like boats, submarines and aeroplanes] to be illustrated.
Dixie Dugan Also Sunday pages. great stuff.
Two points. Why did so many comedy strips have a young, tomboy preteen girl paired with a glamorous older sister or cousin?
And. the Gag on page 4 [CB+ page 47] is way ahead of its time!
BO Another Dog cartoon, but this is a 'Normal' Dog whose thoughts we can read in
English. Well done and thought out, and not unrealistic.
I've often wondered what kind of mind you have to have to come up with Gag after Gag and not repeat yourself.

Some of the books on CB+ that are strip compilations are a mess and look like they were just slapped together. This one is clearly more organize and edited. If I was a kid and bought this, I would not have been disappointed.                           
     

[Electricmastro]

Columbia comics #1 was published in 1943. There seems to have been only #1 of this title. Copies go for around $400.00.
Titles publication information gives at times 'Publication Enterprises' and at other times 'Columbia Comics Corporation' or 'Magazine Enterprises', according to GCD, they only ever had 8 titles and lasted from 1943 to 1949.
Oddly Columbia comics corporation's best-known title was Big Shot comics and this is not listed by GCD.

Columbia Comics was a Golden Age comic book company that I

[Robb_K]

Only a few days left, so I'll post my comments on this comic book now.  As I stated above, I missed seeing this book in the beginning of the 1950s, when I read my 4 older cousins' hand-me down comics.  I knew Joe Palooka and Dixie Dugan from reading the newspaper strips.  I didn't read the human character strips, so, I never read "Big Shot" comics (probably because my cousins didn't buy that one, nor "Sparky Watts").  Overall, the newspaper strips which make up this entire book, were formatted so well into the comic book format, that most, if not all readers probably couldn't tell that they were all originally written and drawn for placement in newspaper Sunday comics pages.

Joe Palooka
This episode of Joe Palooka's saga was very slow-moving, stretched out with little of interest to me dragged out over many pages.  It seemed to be mainly an advertisement for Boys' Town, even much more than the 1930s "tearjerker" film starring Pat O'Brian and Spencer Tracy.

Sparky Watts
I can't imagine why Columbia interrupted their issuing (re-printing) of consecutive episodes of The Saga of Sparky Watts, from its newspaper strip, in their showcase magazine, "Big Shot Comics", with a one-shot issue of Columbia Comics.  The Big Shot subscribers and regular readers would have needed to find out about the Columbia issue, to avoid missing that episode.  It is true that these "episodes", each being format modified collections of several strips, were made to simulate "stand-alone" stories.  But, as a Sparky fan, I would much rather have had ALL his "stories" printed consecutively in a single magazine series.

As to the "story", it was fairly typical, and reiterated the basic premise of the series, that Sparky was given his super strength and flying, and super speed, and vision powers by being zapped by cosmic rays from a machine invented by Doc Static.  In this episode, the only action demonstrates to the reader Sparky's "powers", but only mentions that Doc has a new crimefighting assignment in mind for him.  But, unfortunately, we don't get to see even the beginning of it (which could have resulted in a great cliff-hanger, to make the reader want to read the next issue.  But, perhaps because it wasn't sure, at the time of this book's preparation, whether or not the next episode would be in Columbia or Big Shot Comics, this episode had to remain only an advert for, and introduction to, the character and the series.  So, it is a fairly boring "teaser".
         
Charlie Chan
This was a well-drawn, good story, with good action, lots of suspense. Of course, it takes advantage of old wives' tales about the art of hypnotism, and therefore, is a bit unrealistic, trying to make us believe that if the hypnotist who put the young lady under the trance dies, she can NEVER come out of the trance, and that a hypnotised person can NOT disregard and disobey a post hypnotic suggestion.  But, believing those wives' tales told for centuries by carnival hypnotists, helps make this story work, and allow for an interesting plot.  But, there is also the problem of how the villain could have gotten hold of the heir's money, had he falsely "proven" that Sally WASN'T the heir.  He would have had to be the family's next in line for the inheritance, or would have had to have a ladyfriend of approximately Sally's age, and married her, before or after copying her infantile footprints, and forging a new birth certificate/ID and medical file for her, including the fiancee's footprints.  In the 1930s, that would have been difficult to accomplish.

Hollywood Husband (Sunday Pages)
Not very funny, to my taste.  Rather dull.  But the art is good.

Captain Yank
An interesting story.  An American adventurer has his boat destroyed by a Japanese air squadron's bomb, and makes his way through Japanese-occupied waters near the eastern end of the then Dutch colonies of Indonesia, to safety in Northern Australia.  He teams up with a Dutch soldier, and then, an Australian, and is helped by local Malay island tribes.  The artwork is good, and the writer's knowledge of the area is quite good.  It all makes for a believable situation (which I find was not so common in a lot of The US early 1940s comic books).  Many of them betray a lack of knowledge of geographical, historical, and/or socio-political conditions in those areas.  Not my cup of tea, but easy to read, and doesn't insult the inteligence, because the author ans artist knew their subject and craft.

Dixie Dugan (Sunday Pages)
Also not my cup-of-tea.  These one-pagers are slightly humourous, but not enough to my taste to be entertaining.  Again, the artwork is good.  I skipped over Dixie's strip when reading The Sunday Funnies, back in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Bo (Sunday one-page, stand-alone gags)
Frank Beck's late 19th and early 20th Century, engraving style artwork of The "Bo" newspaper strip was excellent.  I love just looking at it.  The on-page Sunday gags were usually clever, unusually realistic, and show that the author knew a lot about dogs (including their psychology).  He relates that well to the human (especially dog lovers') sense of humour.  The one pagers are mildly entertaining.  But, I really like the 4-6 page complete stories, which included his master, Junior, and Junior's parents, that were printed during about half of the 1940s in Columbia's "Big Shot" Comics (the other half printing Sunday stand-alone gags).  And later, during the mid 1950s, complete stories again appeared in Charlton's "Bo" series (3 issues).

[The Australian Panther]

First:-
Robb and I rotate the choices every three weeks.The next choice is due early next week,  I have a few interesting choices up my sleeve. But I have also been thinking it would be good to open 'the reading group' up a little. So I have given the next slot to Andrew999 who will post on Tuesday. Can't wait to see his choice.
Second:- Robb has been (Understandably) a little peeved by the paucity of responses to the last book.
I had a look and there is a total of 8 so far.  The low average seems to be 7. So not really so bad. The lowest reading group response was #4. and the responses seem to average between 7 and 16. 20 is a good response.
If you have any ideas for the reading group, let Robb or myself know, and we will consider them.         

[Robb_K]

First:-
Robb and I rotate the choices every three weeks.The next choice is due early next week,  I have a few interesting choices up my sleeve. But I have also been thinking it would be good to open 'the reading group' up a little. So I have given the next slot to Andrew999 who will post on Tuesday. Can't wait to see his choice.
Second:- Robb has been (Understandably) a little peeved by the paucity of responses to the last book.
I had a look and there is a total of 8 so far.  The low average seems to be 7. So not really so bad. The lowest reading group response was #4. and the responses seem to average between 7 and 16. 20 is a good response.
If you have any ideas for the reading group, let Robb or myself know, and we will consider them.       

I'm glad you got Andrew to choose the next book.  I'm for having the most possible different book choosers as possible. 

[lyons]

Columbia Comics 1 is a collection of McNaught and Markey popular Sydicate strips. Not a fan of Columbia's Skyman.  The artwork is good but never evolved - much like the hero's story lines.  An interesting read. Thanks Robb. 

[Electricmastro]

Columbia Comics 1 is a collection of McNaught and Markey popular Sydicate strips. Not a fan of Columbia's Skyman.  The artwork is good but never evolved - much like the hero's story lines.  An interesting read. Thanks Robb.

Yeah, even in the later arc where Skyman goes to space, Ogden Whitney never really took advantage of displaying creative, dynamic space art artists like Al Williamson and the Planet Comics artists had.

[justice]

Thank you from me, too.
Another piece of the Golden Age Comics jigsaw puzzle.
As a kid I only ever had one ancient copy of Bigshot Comics ,a hand me down from my older brothers.I so enjoyed it, that I have never forgotten it and was thrilled to find many are available on this site.I cannot agree with the criticisms of Skyman, as I liked the stories.I loved Mickey Finn, Brass Knuckles ,Sparky Watts and Dixie Dugan too.Each one to their own!

[Morgus]

I have a soft spot for what I call 'greatest hits' packages like this. My choice was Charlie Chan, after I had watched the first four FOX Charlie Chan's earlier this week...not as good as the movies, but pretty on par with what you'd get on the radio shows...and the art was great.

[narfstar]

When it comes to Columbia choices I go with Sparky. I have read other Sparky stores and even have a Sparky  Watts comic. They are so much fun to read. I tend to go for fun in my old age

[crashryan]

I have been out of circulation for a long, long time, so I'm going to try catching up on the Reading Group.

With compilations like this you end up critiquing the original newspaper strips rather than the comic itself. It's a decent mix of strips both well-known and obscure. Some of the editing is rather choppy. This could be the result of cramming a slow-paced strip into too few comic book pages.

I can't get over what a baldfaced promotional piece the Joe Palooka story is. Boys' Town was (and still is) an admirable project; however I suspect this sequence may have tied in with the 1938 Spencer Tracy movie. Columbia removed the strip copyright lines so I can't tell how old they are. The original story seems to have included a travelogue of the western United States. That would have run on for a long time. Compressing such a saga into 9 pages makes the comic book version jump all over the place. By the way, Father Flanagan was still alive in 1943 when this comic appeared. He died of a heart attack five years later at age 61. As far as I know Joe Palooka is still alive.

As for Joe himself, I never cared much for the strip. Joe is always good-hearted, which is fine, but I could never tell if he was simply uneducated or punchy. His intelligence seemed to vary according to the punch line.

I still can't make up my mind about Sparky Watts. There's a lot to like. Boody Rogers has a wild imagination and comes up with delightfully crazy ideas. But some things don't make sense. Slap Happy is the prime example. Why the huge feet? Why wear his name on his shirt? Who the heck is he, anyway? And what are Sparky's powers? He seems to be able to fly by flapping his arms.

To be honest, the main reason I don't like the strip more is the artwork. Of all the cartoonists in all the gin joints in all the world, why did Boody Rogers choose to copy slavishly one of the ugliest strip cartoonists of the 40s? I know, I know, he was Zack Mosley's assistant. But even assistants can have personal styles. Rogers copies Mosley from the awkward character designs right down to the annoying use of th' for the in dialogue. It makes me cringe.

Amusing coincidence: the only Charlie Chan Sunday page in my collection is the first page of this reprint. Chan was an enjoyable strip. The stories flowed well, there were some interesting characters, and the art was a decent Caniff-Sickles pastiche. I did production on a series of Chan reprints and always enjoyed reading the stories (something I can't say for other titles I worked on). Like Don Sherwood, Alfred Andriola is so notorious for handing his entire strip over to ghosts that it's impossible to know what, if anything, he had to do with this story. Let's just say that whoever it was did a good job. As others have noted, the portrayal of hypnotism is bogus. It was par for the course, though, for movies and books of the time.

Jefferson Machamer (pronounced, it seems, "Mac Hammer") did better with his girlie gags, but Hollywood Husband is okay art wise. Machamer's men always seemed to have worn the same wrinkled suit for a whole week. They also sweated a lot. The gags are weak.

I haven't seen much of Captain Yank. The story is typical WWII action crowded with caricatured Japanese. The bit with the boogie woogie drum beat is a stretch. The artwork has an earnestness somewhat at odds with the lighter parts of the story. The artist does nice hardware. I've read that Frank Tinsley didn't work much on Captain Yank after the first year or so. I can't recognize his comics work. All I know is his aviation pulp illustration, and that was practically all airplanes, not people.

Our local daily carried Dixie Dugan in the early 60s along with several other forgotten second-tier strips. I always liked the art but thought the stories were dull. It's hard to believe that Dixie started out as a Louise Brooks lookalike in Hollywood Showgirl.  John Striebel's drawing, especially his figures, is always good. His everything-at-eye-level layouts are dull, though, like the gags. Except...are we to understand (page 47) that "Bill" is a female impersonator doing high kicks in a chorus line? Isn't that rather daring for a mainstream 1940's  comic strip?

Bo is okay, but reminds me of better-drawn dog strips like Napoleon. I don't think the jokes in any of the dog strips were ever anything special.

So ends Columbia Comics #1, with entreaties to Sell Collier's Magazine and to Have Your Body Bring You FAME instead of SHAME! Worth the read as a time passer.

[Robb_K]

I still can't make up my mind about Sparky Watts. There's a lot to like. Boody Rogers has a wild imagination and comes up with delightfully crazy ideas. But some things don't make sense. Slap Happy is the prime example. Why the huge feet? Why wear his name on his shirt? Who the heck is he, anyway? And what are Sparky's powers? He seems to be able to fly by flapping his arms.

Slap Happy asked Doc Static to use his "Atomizer" machine on his feet to make them bigger, because he was self-conscious that they were too small.  But, by a fluke accident, the atomizing setting got set wayyyy too high, so his feet became gigantic.  Doc static hired college student, Sparky, to be his guinea pig to test his new machine.  The Atomizer changed Sparky's DNA, and thereby, made Sparky super strong, and allowed him to move his arms so fast that they can produce such wind to allow him to fly, and he can see farther, hear better, and so forth.  Several bad mistakes have been made with the Atomizer, leading to disasters, so he was afraid to have Doc try to shrink them.  He DID try it once, but an accident happened, and Doc had the machine shrink Slap Happy's head to the size of a baseball.