Here's my review of Comics on Parade 27:
Tailspin Tommy (Artwork and Storywriting by Hal Forrest)
This is an on-going serialised adventure story taken from a United Features newspaper (Sunday?) strip, reformatted for comic books. Having started reading in the late 1940s, but reading lots of comics which were issued during the early 1940s, I read a lot of books containing episodic serialised stories from newspapers, and also newly-created for the comic books, but made to look like the newspaper serials. And I hated jumping into the middle of stories, and not seeing how they ended. But, luckily for us, this episode is a complete, self contained short story, with 4 pages containing about 50 panels of artwork, which is the equivalent of 8 pages of 3-tiers each. It's a decent amount of room for a short story or episode, the only drawback is that the images are half the size of the 6-panel pages in the comic books of the early 1940s. Transporting a tiger in a small airplane's cabin, and having the animal break out of its cage, is an interesting scenario. The artwork is good, and the story had a good plot, good pacing, good use of suspense, and a good ending. It held my interest. The action scenes of the maneuvers of the plane, and the tiger were good. It is very representative of episodes from the "Tailspin Tommy" strip, most of which I've read over the years.
I also enjoyed the model plans for the Berliner-Joyce XF3J US Navy fighter plane.
Jasper (Drawn and Written by Frank Owen)
Benign, average-type comic cartoons based on a single character trait theme. I think the sameness would get old quickly. I don't remember having seen this in our Winnipeg or Chicago newspapers.
How It Began/Twice Told Tales (Drawn by Paul Berdaner)
Excellent artwork, and interesting information.
The Captain and The Kids (Artwork and writing by Rudolph Dirks)
Another United Features newspaper (Sunday?) strip. Here we get the problem of jumping into the middle of a story. I've always enjoyed the artwork (especially that of Rudy Dirks) of "The Katzenjammer Kids" and "The Captain and The Kids", but wasn't all that impressed by the mostly action-driven plotlines (if you could call them that) and sameness of these scenarios (which are difficult to think of as stories). But this grouping of newspaper strips into an "episode/scenario", is actually a decent "story", with a real-World basic type of plot, which includes a circus manager/ringmaster/MC becoming jealous of Godfrey, the featured acrobat, who is having a romantic dalliance with the young, beautiful female circus owner(Viola Smeercase). Being a an unsympathetic/non-empathetic sociopath, this circus manager (Ralph Weezil) arranges Godfrey's murder, by ordering him to perform his act without a safety net. But, his effort is thwarted by The K. Kids, when one of them pulls Weezil's arm when he aims to shoot his bow's arrow with a large scissors on its head at the rope upon which Godfrey walks. Although a serious adult-themed basic plot, it is, of course, farcical, and played only for laughs (reminiscent of The Marx Brothers). So, Weezil tries to kill The K. Kids (who act as midgets in their circus act) by having The K. Kids place their entire bodies inside the largest lion's mouth (topping the lion trainer's only putting his head inside), and throwing pepper in the lion's face, causing his reflexes to make him bite down. But, instead, he sneezes The Kids out of his mouth. Soon, Godfrey and Viola are engaged to be married. Weezil vows to kill Godfrey. He meets Edward J. Eevil, the evil clown, who teams up with Weezil, who says he has the perfect plan to get rid of The Kids. This book's episode leaves off at a great suspense point, Weezil buys a giant, very mean gorilla.
So, this episode of "The Captain and The Kids" is one of the most enjoyable storylike collection of strips of these characters (including the previous "K. Kids") I have ever read. Of course I love the classic poetic stories of The 19th Century's Plattdeutsch children's book author, Wilhelm Busch, whose favourite bad boys, Max und Moritz, provided the inspiration for Dirks to create Hans und Fritz, "The Katzenjammer Kids", in 1897. I love Busch's fabulous engraving-style inking, and his mid 19th Century style of warning mischievious children that their bad behaviour will be punished severely. I was introduced to Busch's work when I resided in Bremen during the first half of the 1990s. Most of his children's stories give an insight into the old adult mindset of "Spare the rod, and spoil the child", which, almost 100 years later, still ruled supreme in Europe, when I was growing up.
Looy Dot Dope (Artwork by Bernard Dibble)
Apparently another German-American comic strip based on a narrow theme. These gags were mildly amusing. Having read a lot of them over the years in United Features comic books, I found them uneven on average, with some being decently funny, but most slightly boring, or too much the same basic premise.
Ella Cinders (Artwork by Bill Conselman) (Writing by Charlie Plumb)
I must say that I've never really cared much for the "Ella Cinders" newspaper strip. We jump into the middle of an ongoing story in this episode. It seems to have a lot of repetition, which make it look like these panels were taken from daily strips of 4 or 5 panels, rather than whole or half-page Sunday strips. There is also shading in panels, and residue from whiting out shading that supports that conclusion. This is also an interesting on-going plot and scenario, that Ella's father, who left her unsympathetic, mean mother, and took on a false identity to "hide" from her. He has returned to USA to get some sort of identity "makeover" at a service that specialises in such things, which may, or may not include cosmetic plastic surgery. He discovers that Ella works there, and unluckily, his estranged wife runs it. Ella warns him, and tells him she wants to leave, as her mother mistreats her terribly. She tells her father to hide in the laundry chute. Ma Cinders discovers that one of her workers has been sending clean laundry down the chute, as the 3rd/last page ends.
It seems to be a decent basic plot that holds my interest. It is well-drawn. I do have enough interest in it to find the issue before and after, and read the entire story, some day when I have free time.
Dynamite Dunn
Dunn is a championship-level professional boxer. This comic book "episode", consists of just 3 pages (probably 3 Sunday strip pages). Interesting that the author brought in Jack Dempsey, a real US and international champion boxer, to referee a championship bout between the lead character and another fictional boxer. I suppose he had to get Dempsey and his agent's permission to do so, including their first look and approval of strips including him, and possibly for a fee paid by United Features. I think that switching two identical twins in and out, getting rest while fighting one man (tiring him out), so almost sure they should win, is a brilliant idea for a comic story.
Unbelivable But True Drawn by Frank N. Ernest (obvious writer nom-de-plume-implying that these are, indeed, all true)
Decent artwork, and interesting information. I've always wondered if some of the unbelievable events were simply made up to fill in the need for more than the researchers could dig up. I found the Ted Williams hitting a home run into the freight train interesting, as the ball then was carried some few hundred miles further, making it "the furthest travelling home run in US Organised Baseball history". I wondered if that really happened. I wasn't quite born yet in the late 1930s, and I'm sure that a journalistic article describing an event in a US minor league baseball game wouldn't, in any case, have gotten printed in a Canadian newspaper.
The Young Idear (Artwork and writing by Opdyk)
Having 4 to 5 year olds behave like adults can be funny and interesting for a handful of one or two-panel jokes. So, that strip had already shot its wad for many newspaper comics readers after one or two days.
The Boomers(Drawn by Dick Richards)
Here, we also are thrown into the middle of an ongoing story. A ghost haunting a resort hotel sounds like a good premise for a comic strip or comic book serialised episodic format. We readers don't get enough of this story in these 3 pages to judge whether or not tha author's portrayal of the mystery is worthy or not. Of note, is the "black-faced", cartoony, portrayal of an African-American early teenager and adult, which certainly would be considered racist. The artwork is generally good, but nothing special.
Little Mary Mixup (Artwork and Storywriting by R.M. Brinkerhof)
Again, we are thrown into the middle of a story, and this time, in only 2 pages, we don't see enough to make much of a judgement. At least the artwork is very good, and there is suspense at the end, making us hope to read next month's issue, to find out if Mary's pig wins the prize, and if she sells him for $100.
Danny Dingle (Artwork by Bernard Dibble)
This is drawn in a common cartoony style, at an average level of competence. It is heavily dialogue-based, and heavy on gags, rather than a complex story line. There is not enough on the 2 pages to judge whether or not I would enjoy reading the strip regularly. But, I didn't find these 2 pages very amusing. The jokes are too obvious, and expected. I liked the artist's (Bernard Dibble's) "Hawkshaw The Detective" newspaper strip, better.
Broncho Bill (Artwork and Storywriting by Harry O'Neill)
It seems that we've already reviewed The "Broncho Bill" strip when review a different comic book series. I remember having read this cattle rustling mystery story with Bull Redmond. O'Neill's artwork is top notch, as usual, and the story is a good one. We can tell that this has been reformatted for comic books, as the suspense points at the end of each page are not very good, but, I'm guessing they were a lot better in the daily newspaper strip.
Cynical Susie (Artwork by Bernard Dibble)
This is quite a bit more cartoony than Dibble's normal style. As usual, the artwork is very good. Wow! Susie finds giant footprints, gets a scientist/professor to look at them, and ends up shooting upwards towards leaving The earth in a rocket spaceship, ALL on one Sunday comic strip page!!! This is one feature in this book that I'd like to see the next page. I wonder why this one got only one?
Abbie An' Slats (Artwork and Storywriting by Raeburn van Buren)
And yet, this strip (whose artwork is excellent, and yet, I never cared about reading it), gets 5 full pages. It is difficult, jumping into the middle of this complex story, which I have never read. The first narrative doesn't give us much to go on, IF this story is completely new to us. However, this episode certainly ends at a super suspense point, with Slats having contracted a deadly Chinese plague, and the very doctors who were working on creating a vaccine for it, spirit him away as a guinea pig "prisoner", with the goal of creating a vaccine that can save the lives of a big portion of that state's people, and possibly that of are large portion of the entire nation's population. Does this all sound timely and familiar? What a weird coincidence!
Billy Make Believe (Drawn and Written by H.E. Homan)
This is one of common form "Walter Mitty" types of series starring little boys who dream of going on adventures. It reminds me of "Giles" from ACG's "Giggle Comics", who daydreams himself into bizarre and fantastic adventures, and John Stanley's "Peterkin Pottle", who does the same. From just the one and 3/4 pages, it appears that this should be an interesting story, with Billy hooking up with a wandering old man with a trained bear, and the 3 of them chased by the police.
Overall Assessment
Luckily, CB+ has all the Comics on Parade issues from #21 through #29, so we can read the previous and following issues to read the complete stories or story scenarios of most (if not all) of the on-going stories contained in this book. Both of these books were worth reading, and I got a lot of entertainment out of them, and learned a little more about the history of The US comic book industry, during the years just before I was born.
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