First post, let's make it a good one:
New Fun #1Jack Woods: Not sure what to think of this one, really. Not all that much really happens, but it presents a reasonably intriguing mystery and a decent enough cliffhanger that makes me interested in learning what's going on and seeing what happens next. Something about both the art and framing reminds me a lot of vintage Tex Willer. Not a bad start at all.
Sandra of the Secret Service: Man, this one's clunky to the point of being hard to follow, and would've really benefited from some explanatory narration boxes providing a bit of context to what's going on. You'd think a strip called "Sandra of the secret service" would star a secret service agent named Sandra, but no - the Sandra in the strip is just a normal upper class society woman. Random people just kinda come and go and it's hard to get a real handle of what's going on - random guy hijacks Sandra's car to escape some other random guy and then a third random guy shows up at Sandra's house followed by a fourth random guy entering with a gun - making it hard to care about the cliffhanger. Art is a bit too busy too, I didn't even see the top hat guy's gun at first.
Oswald the Rabbit: Weird layout. Each of the six strips ends with a slapsticky fall, but they're not really punchlines and clearly aren't meant to be taken as such - the actual punchline comes at the very end. It's not really that funny though. Shame, because the art is nice and dynamic, so it's clear a lot of care went into this. What I'm really curious about is why National went to the trouble of licensing the character for this, it's not like this strip is advertised anywhere, and the license can't have been that cheap.
Jigger and Ginger: Amusing enough sitcom strip, no worse than a lot of contemporary newspaper ones. Definitely the best of the humor strips in the book.
What's a "moom pitcher"?
Barry O'Neill: This one does right all the things Sandra did wrong. Proper setup that explains what's going on, introduces the characters, provides a real sense of danger and gives us an actually exciting cliffhanger. And unlike both Jack Woods and Sandra, it feels like things are actually happening in this one. I love the art, it's very stylistic and has this franco-belgian look to it, with some of the characters reminding me of Herge and Morris.
The Magic Crystal of History: Speaking of things happening, we're definitely NOT getting that here. This is all setup. I'll admit I'm interested in seeing what going to happen next, but did they
really have to waste that many panels on so little instead of getting the plot moving? Also I can't stand the way Bobby looks. Talk about dork.
Wing Brady: Intriguing setup. Much like with Jack Woods, I want to see what's happening next, but at the same time I'm a bit miffed the strip ends just as it's starting to go somewhere. And UNLIKE Jack Woods, it doesn't really provide any suspense beyond "our heroes are in trouble, how will they get out of this?". Passable enough, but not great.
Ivanhoe: Oh boy. I've never read the novel, but I know it has a solid reputation as an exciting adventure that got a lot of young boys interested in reading. This dull-as-dishwater adaptation is NOT how you get anyone interested in checking out the book. Or the next installment, for that matter. We're introduced to a bunch of named characters, but they spend the full strip doing nothing but searching for and eventually finding the guy they wanted to see for unexplained reasons while being misled by some subjects who dislike them for equally unexplained reasons, and apparently someone's been mean to dogs? Or one dog, the script can't make up its mind. This is impossible to care about. I like how the "next time" blurb namedrops a "Bois-Guilbert" as if we're supposed to have been introduced to him, not even the author can be bothered to keep track of which details of the novel he's actually including in his dry summary-esque script.
Judge Perkins: Sloppy art and unfunny excuse for a "punchline". This barely even forms a coherent narrative, I can't for the life of me understand what those first panels have to do with the ones leading up to the supposed punchline. Am I missing something?
EDIT: Yes I am, a peek at issue #2 reveals that what I called a very poor punchline was actually an unmarked (and also very poor) cliffhanger, meaning this is supposed to form a humorous multipart narrative rather than a single page gag. It's still unfunny and rather disconnected, but knowing that this page isn't meant to be taken on its own salvages it
slightly.
Don Drake: Wow, this one wastes no time getting to the action. While it's not hard to follow what's happening, the action doesn't flow well and could've benefitted from a slightly slower pace, and the first panel really should've been preceeded by one establishing the setting properly. I like the crazy "no time for the current danger to even settle, here's a different one" plot though, and the designs are cool. Kinda like this one despite its shortcomings.
Loco Luke: This one's weird. It's vaguely comical but not really
funny, and plays itself fairly straight aside from the pretty lame gag in the middle. The cliffhanger isn't really a cliffhanger either. This one just falls completely flat for me.
Spook Ranch: This one's solid. The suspense is really well done - you KNOW there's something keeping an eye on Vic, even the illustration tells you that, and the constant false alarms really keeps the reader on the edge. Then eventually, the danger shifts from Vic trying to avoid an invisible killer to Vic being in danger of being accused of a murder he didn't commit. Well written and definitely made me want to read part 2. These old text stories could be pretty good at times.
Scrub Hardy: I like the art, but the gag isn't much to speak of and as much as they're making it clear what happens is an accident, it mostly reads as if everyone's just bullying Scrub for the hell of it. Too many named characters here too, feels like a poor fit for the first strip in a series. Not awful, but not all that good either.
Jack Andrews: Actually kind of intriguing and got my interest with the reveal at the end. Andrews' manuever at the end of the game was pretty cool too. Panel 5 and 6 could've worked better had we actually SEEN the action described in 5, but they clearly needed the space provided for the rest of the panels, so it's acceptable enough. Liked this a lot more than I thought I would, first sports comic from this era I've can remember reading and enjoying.
Bathysphere: Kinda liked this little time capsule infodump, though it could've definitely been a bit longer and more detailed. I can see kids reading it at the time struggling to understand what it's talking about if they hadn't already heard of this stuff.
Sports: Poorly written but actually quite educational article about the history of hockey. Learned quite a bit. Not bad.
On the Radio: Quickie namedrops and recommendations of a couple popular radio serials of the time. Feels a bit empty - I imagine everyone reading this had heard of Buck Rogers, and Bobby Benson isn't described in any detail beyond "it's a western". That Thrills of Tomorrow thing sounds interesting though, wonder if there's recordings anywhere.
In the Movies: I had no idea the Jack Woods strip was based on a movie serial. I want to check that out now. Sequoia and Life of a Bengal Lancer actually sound mildly intriguing too, I like classic adventure movies. And I have to laugh at how they once again promote a western without being able to say anything more than "it's a western".
Model Aircraft: This looks pretty sloppily written to me, I can't imagine this model looking all that good. Instructions seem incomplete too, with no real mention of how to do the tail and zero mention of the wheels. They say they'll provide instructions for one new model every issue, but I can't imagine this kind of super basic modeling being able to provide all that many variants of planes. It's also practically a (poor) ad for that magazine they're shilling in the ad, I sure hope that magazine has higher quality content than this.
Aviation: VERY cool historical article about Wiley Post, who was still alive at the time, with the writer talking about a future that's been reality for quite some time. This is great. it's amazing how far we've come since this was written.
Ship Models: This one's even worse than the model aircraft. Plans aren't even provided for all the parts, several parts aren't properly numbered, and the instructions forgot to mention part 6 (I assume "1-5" was meant to say "1-6"). And I can't figure out the sail stuff at all. Maybe I'm just dumb, but I can't imagine anyone making a decent looking model from this mess.
Cap'n Erik: This one hides way too much from the reader to really work. What are these guys after, seals? Why? And who ARE they? Gotta love how Erik reminds that other guy of what he already knows just so Butch can overhear him too. This one just fails to grab my attention. No fan of the art either, you can't tell any of these guys apart aside from their jackets.
Buckskin Jim: This is basically the same plot as Wing Brady, except in a western setting. And why the hell is Jim staying behind with the old guy instead of warning the wagon train that needs warning? That's just risking throwing your life away for nothing. Can't really work up too much excitement for this one, there's nothing happening here that's not utterly pedestrian. Art's not very good either. Blah.
Popular Science: Fascinating article about audio modulated light (which made me interested enough to look that stuff up for more info) and the earliest beginnings of solar cell technology. Plus a poorly explained magic trick for some reason. Not sure why that's in there, but the other stuff was fun.
Stamps and Coins: Incredibly uninteresting article that tries to get kids interested in collecting these things by mentioning two random commemorative stamps and telling kids they should start by "just collecting everything they can find" and "get foreign friends and relatives to write you". This is comically lame. At least the coin part of the article mentions the trivia point of why coins have ridges, which is interesting enough.
Young Homemakers: Article about the importance of a well arranged kitchen (that mostly just says "utensils should be located close to where they're used" a bunch of times) and the proper height of working surfaces, seemingly implying that the young readers of this comic should start rearranging their moms' kitchens. It's not that the info here isn't sensible, but it feels like something you should be telling adults, not children. Bizarre article.
After School: This one's charming. Not sure I'd classify it as comedy, there's no real gags here, but it has a kind of amusing tone throughout the entire thing that makes me want to see more of these guys. There's not much to the cliffhanger though, it's more of a "next issue" blurb, but that works too.
Caveman Capers: This isn't funny, it's not exciting and it's not particularly charming either. "Cave boy discovers fire and then a random dinosaur attacks, to be continued"? Meh. That "Wur" girl they bother mentioning in the opening blurb sure doesn't do anything to justify her existence either. Art's fine, but this is not very good.
Fun Films: I honestly don't really get how this is supposed to work. If you were to flip between these pictures at the right pace at the right time you'd sort of get the sense of motion they're going for, but you can't really get that by just pulling it sideways through that hole. Pulling fast won't get the pictures aligned right and pulling slow will kill the sense of motion. I don't think they thought this one through too well. And I know this thing isn't trying to be plot focused, but this Tad kid is suicidally dumb for sneaking onto a pirate ship like that.
Bubby and Beevil: Why is the guy named Bubby here and "Fun" in the editorial? The general concept of a little goblin guy sneaking around doing good deeds in secret while an evil goblin guy tries to undo said good deeds is fine, but this is way too pedestrian to be of any interest and has to be the most uninteresting cliffhanger yet.
Pelion and Ossa: I don't even know what to say about this. Two funny animals crash their sled and enter a nearby house, and then somebody is coming, to be continued? This is the biggest piece of nothing in the entire book. The most interesting part of it is that they're vaguely hinting that "someone" is Santa, but I know that's not actually who it is, so that just hurts this thing even more.
Super-Police: Here's another strip that's just hurt too much by the fact that it ends before it can go anywhere. Most of the page is spent on Joan's dumb risky gamble getting on the plane, which doesn't really make her very endearing, with not enough time spent to make us
care about those mysterious sinking ships the cliffhanger tries to make us worry about. At least the art is solid.
The editorial wants my top 8 list of favorite comics, so here goes:
1) Barry O'Neill
2) Jack Woods
3) Jigger and Ginger
4) Jack Andrews
5) After School
6) Don Drake
7) Wing Brady
Magic Crystal
There's some decent strips in here that catch my attention, but man does the magazine suffer from only giving you one single page that barely manages to establish the strip's concept before it ends. I know this is how sunday newspaper strips worked, but those are EXTRAS in papers that you're primarily buying for the articles, they can afford to take a couple weeks to get the reader's attention. This book is (mostly) just comics, the comics need to immediately stand on their own from day 1. And the editorial may promise the magazine will become weekly if it performs well enough, but for the time being it's supposed to be monthly (it actually went several months between most issues); just one page of each of these strips a month feels way too little.
