Swing Sisson - Feature Comics 50 - "Ace Of The Bandstand"
I collect Feature Comics from #64-132 mainly for their comedy content. So, I'm familiar with the character, "Swing Sisson", and have read his stories which appeared in those books, which contained about 3/4 of his stories. This story (his 2nd) was new to me. I wondered what his first, defining stories were like. Actually, this story is doubly interesting to me, because its story is very similar to one of my favourite late noir films, starring one of the worst actors ever to get filmed, Jacques Bergerac ("The Hypnotic Eye"). He played a hypnotist with a stage show, whose beautiful assistant had had her face burnt with acid, and ravaged to the point where she had to wear a mask to avoid all who looked upon her cringing, and looking away in horror. To get revenge upon those young women, who retained their beautiful looks, she had her hypnotist husband hypnotise them, and leave them with a final hypnotic suggestion to bathe their faces in face cream which she had replaced with acid. I wonder if the writer of the screenplay for that early 1950s Noir film had been inspired by having read this comic book story?
This story's plot, with a gang extorting large sums of money from female stars, threatening to harm them badly, is a good one. The story moved along quickly, and held my interest (to see how Swing would defeat the baddies. The artwork is average,- not very interesting. But not bad. The colouring was average. I've liked most of the Swing Sisson plots, because they are semi-realistic (at least compared to Superhero stories). I liked the scene showing that Swing and Toby tied the crooks to windmill blades, and probably threatened to spin the wheel unless they confess their crimes to the police, when the latter arrive. This is a tactic used in many comic book stories I've read, and in a few comedy films I've seen. The victims spin around in circles until they become dizzy (but, neither the comics nor the films ever showed them vomiting out their guts before caving in and agreeing to"spill the beans".
Yes QQ, your point about the acid eating into a lamp post, but not a child's toy water pistol. That water pistol's inner chamber must have been lined with steel.
Swing Sisson - Feature Comics 141
I can identify with the night club scene in USA and Canada during the mid and late 1940s, as many of them were owned by gangsters and crooks, and had illegal gambling back in the private (Club Members Only rooms), as that was the scenario employed in many 1940s and 1950s Noir Films I've enjoyed over the years, as well as detective mystery novels I've read. Also, during my time in the Music Industry, I've been exposed to the slimy side, including needing to bribe DJs to play our artists' records, and parties with loads of drugs going around, and nightclub owners threatening people (all of which is why I left that business). But, it makes for good (and realistic) detective stories. Being a free-lance, roving, nightclub band leader would be a really good disguise for an undercover cop or private detective.
This story about the crook running an illegal (and crooked) gambling operation on his yacht was a good choice. I agree with others above that it doesn't seem likely that Toby's guitar would pick up electric current from the clicking impulses made by the remote control device to move the roulette ball. That's something like just making up some pseudo-scientific sounding explanation for a phenomenon needed for the story that seems plausible to the casual reader, who knows little science, or glosses over it too quickly, without stopping to think about it, because it works well enough in the story on the surface level.
Hack O'Hara - Crack Comics 21
Driving a taxi cab late at night in a big city, with a big, international commercial centre, a busy harbour, and political and state and national governmental offices (e.g. a New York clone) is also a good way to get an action hero into the thick of his meat and potatoes. In this case, it gets O'Hara mixed up in the murder of a well-known diamond merchant, by crooks after an especially valuable set of diamonds. Hiding behind a gravestone in a graveyard is an interesting way to trap the villains. And hiding valuable diamonds inside a set of hollow false teeth is an inventive way to hide them while transporting them. The artwork in this seems a bit better than in "Swing Sisson. The story is a bit unrealistic (too simplified). Being only 5 pages, with almost all of its first taken up in a splash panel, is WAY too short for story flow and building up character characteristics and the scenario setting.
Hack O'Hara - Crack Comics 59
This story, about a wealthy young society lady, who needs a ride to a pierfront warehouse at 3:00 in the late night/early morning, and is delivered there by O'Hara, is wayyyyyyy too short (at 5 pages) to be called a story. And, to my taste, is too short to be worth reading. It shows only the very basic information that would be written in an outline, not even remotely what would be written in a half-page scenario. And everything is obvious (cookie cutter standard basic story elements listed in any crime/detective story writer's primer). O'Hara and his taxi driver colleague break into the warehouse and subdue the gang's guard, and see from the adjacent dock, a schooner. They swim out to it, and sure enough, it just happens to be owned the the gangster who has kidnapped the rich woman. Of course the two cabbies subdue the gangster and his sidekick, and all is good with The World.
in real life, both those cabbies would be fired for leaving their jobs for hours at a time to act as Private Dicks. And they'd be arrested and fined for withholding information from the police, and interfering with police jurisdiction, and possibly causing crime scenes' evidence to be corrupted. And, at the time they decided to go to the original crime scene (abduction location), they really had no knowledge of where the victim(s) was(were). Of course, they should have given the clues they did have (all they knew) to the local police, immediately. The plot is routine, but COULD be worthy if it were used in a 12-20-page story with room to provide an adequate setting, some character development, and a pace that increases in intensity and suspense.
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Topic: Reading Group #311--Quality's Third-Stringers (Read 977 times)
