Print

[FraBig]

Now that I think about it, both Cat-Man and Black Condor have very similar origins to Tarzan.

Seems like the variation of the Tarzan story where the orphaned kid gets the chance of being raised by humans instead of wild animals is more common among superheroes, though. Probably popularized by Amazing Man, because both Thunderbolt, and moreso Iron Fist, have been inspired by the Bill Everett character. Timely's Red Raven is another very similar character, and he debuted after Aman.

[SuperScrounge]

Never would have though ERB's work influenced Superman.

John Carter of Mars?

[SuperScrounge]

Smash Comics #25

The Ray
Nice art, but lacks the dynamism of Lou Fine's work. Story's okay, although if the police investigated his home you'd think they might notice that partial skeleton in his sub-cellar (page 6, 4 of the story).

Archie O'Toole
On the one hand it seems like I've read these “We have to raise money quickly” stories so much I tend to roll my eyes at encountering them. On the other hand it was short and nicely drawn.

Midnight
Jack Cole's no slouch when it comes to dynamic artwork. Wonder if anyone has compared his work to Fine's? The story is slim, I get the feeling Cole invented the visioscope as a way to speed things up because he didn't have enough pages.

Wings Wendall
Okay, but nothing special.

Invisible Justice
So the series is Invisible Justice, but the character is the Invisible Hood? Bwha!?

The Jester
Based on the beginning I was expecting an evil twin type story. Okay.

Espionage
Eh, okay, but nothing special.

Rookie Rankin
Ditto.

Wun Cloo
Okay.

Wildfire
In the '80s Roy Thomas gave the powerless hero Firebrand a previously unknown sister with flame powers and took on the name of Firebrand. I knew there was a Quality heroine with flame powers called Wildfire and wondered why Roy didn't use her. (Aside from possible confusion with a Legion of Super-Heroes character of the same name.) Having finally read one of her stories I think she would have made a much more interesting character to use.

The Pall of Terror
Probably the most entertaining thing about this story is the author misspelling canyon as 'canon'. ;-)

The Purple Trio
So every time Winsul came too, Tiny bashed him in the head? How is he not dead?

Bozo the Robot
Wait'll the Joker finds out the Clown stole the opening to his first story. ;-)

[crashryan]

Crack Comics #13

This is a much more satisfying art job than last issue's. Few cop-outs and surer inking. I remember reading how Will Eisner had bought a box of Chinese-style brushes for his staff because they were super-cheap, but only Eisner and Lou Fine ever felt comfortable with them. I get the impression this story was inked with a Chinese brush. The long flowing thick-and-thin lines look like the sort of strokes that shaped the Filipino inking style (in the Philippines the Chinese-style brush was the default inking tool).

Continuing the discussion of Fine's stylistic evolution: SuperScrounge, I believe (and I may be wrong) that Fine hadn't yet ghosted The Spirit in mid-1941. However he'd been with the studio for three years and taken over from Eisner on "Hawk of the Seas" so he'd had time to absorb the house style. It's even possible that his uber-dynamic action poses were originally inspired by Eisner's cartoony approach, but filtered through Fine's inclinations and his excellent drawing skills.

When Fine took over The Spirit after Eisner was drafted among his first changes were cutting back on the inventive camera angles and making figure proportions and posing a bit more realistic. I think the conservative streak was always in him but grew over time. The drawings of Dr Foster on the first page of this story look like classic magazine illustrations. Fine seems to have spent more time on Foster's drapery in those two panels than he did on all the drawings of Tom Wright's suit on the following two pages. He obviously liked what he was doing there.

Re-reading the references to Fine in Michael Schumacher's Eisner biography I was struck by two points. One was that Fine had absolutely no interest in story, much to Eisner's frustration, since he hoped to have Fine branch out into writing and other areas. All Fine wanted to do was go off in the corner and draw. I wonder if this is why his Spirit work became so placid. Maybe he simply didn't resonate with storytelling and layout techniques. Eisner was known for constantly looking over artists' shoulders and making suggestions. Perhaps without that influence Fine was able to concentrate on what he liked most, drawing pictures.

The other morsel of info was that in 1940-1941 Fine was already hankering to quit comics and go into commercial illustration. This also may have played a part in his cultivating a less dramatic style in his Spirit stories.

This is all speculation. Who's to know nowadays what made Lou Fine tick? He was still a young man in his mid-twenties when he was drawing The Black Condor. I do wonder how it was Fine didn't crack the magazine illustration market. Maybe he didn't need to. While drawing ads at Johnstone & Cushing, an agency specializing in advertising comics, he merged his illustrative flair with his comic strip background to do advertising strips for much more money than he'd have earned drawing comic books.



Ghost Man lamented that Fine switched to a "soul eviscerated generic style that looked like generic 1950's era clip art." I suggest that Fine may have been one of the major creators of that style. He and his frequent collaborator Don Komisarow were drawing newspaper advertising strips for Johnstone & Cushing as early as 1944. I imagine Fine's talents were as influential there as they had been at the Eisner studio.

[paw broon]

Smash comics 25
This is what I want in a comic.  The Ray story just looks so good. "Suddenly a molten gold figure breaks into the room"  "Like a great golden bullet The Ray flies across the pool"
It's fast, exciting, beautiful to look at and classic superhero goings on.
The rest of the comic is pretty good too,  I've always liked Midnight, well since I discovered him in the '70's, and that 4th last panel on our page 17 is quite something.  What a way to go and didn't he deserve it.
I liked the Wings Wendall tale, perhaps because he look like a masked mystery man.  The costume was good and there was action with a good bad guy.
Like others, I couldn't figure out why Invisible Justice  is Invisible Hood.  Series title starring a slightly different named hero?  Anyway, I'm not sure invisible characters work that well in comics.  The ouline reminded me a bit of The Human Bomb.  Daft but ok.
And mentioning a Gustavson hero, there's The Jester in a good looking story. What a clever contrast, The Jester outfit with a skull. As a fan of the pulp hero, The Crimson Clown this Jester idea tickled my fancy.

Wildfire - this early hero with the name - was pretty gruesome in places.  Burning feet: ooohh, nasty. It's a genuine origin story.  Great. Heinrich and dolph are particularly horrible, looking villains, which is good.
The Purple Trio seemed old, dated and corny.  I didn't pay much attention.
Then there's Bozo.  What a lod of old nonsense and a really good evil looking clown.  I've never paid much attention to Bozo, so I don't know who/what he/it is.  do I really care that much?  Well, only because there's another clown character. 
What a great superhero comic book. 
And what a contrast to that Kirby thing, Showdown at Snake River.  I like western comics but that one wasn't particularly good.

[crashryan]

Wonderworld Comics #11

Only a year earlier than Crack #12, but what a difference! Lou Fine certainly blossomed during the interval. The figures are well-drawn but subdued, with more than a casual nod to Alex Raymond. The layouts look very much like Eisner's early style. Given his reputation for inventive camera angles and innovative storytelling, we often forget that in the early days Eisner was all about eye-level long shots (or silly time-saving aerial shots) with characters standing far from the camera. Who knows, maybe Eisner laid this one out for Fine. Fine sure missed the boat on that pathetic airplane (our pages 8-9) but he more than made up for that on the cover.

Just for curiosity's sake I looked up Fine originals on the Heritage Auction site. I was surprised both by how few originals they've sold over the last decade and how "low" the prices were on many items. I put "low" in quotes because almost every winning bid on Heritage is an astronomical figure. Fine's Golden Age pages seem to have sold for around $10,000 and his later Johnstone & Cushing work, like "Space Conquerors" for Boys' Life for about $500. This figure could be misleading. The most recent GA sale was a beautiful Red Bee cover for Hit Comics #6. It sold last September for $65,725 (gulp!). The next most recent sale was some 6-7 years earlier. Looking back over the last decade I have the impression that people bought Fine originals at what was then a ridiculous price, then sat on them. Many other artists I've researched have been sold and resold over the years but not Fine. It's just possible the people who bought the originals years ago actually appreciated what they had and kept their pieces to admire rather than being investors hoping to flip them for a higher price or oligarchs looking for a place to launder their money. Still: $65,000???

[crashryan]

Everybody Else

Until now I've followed Ghost Man's lead and commented only on the Lou Fine stories. But I read all the comics, even the Fine-less ones, and here are random comments. No way I'm going to hit them all.

Crack Comics #12

Vern Henkel was a pleasant middle-tier artist. He did a ton of work for numerous publishers, then quit to open a studio producing industrial slides and film strips (sez Wikipedia). Afterward he went into advertising. I like silly Rivet Age s-f and The Space Legion fills the bill. Nice 30's style spaceship. Like much Golden Age s-f the story imagines rocket propulsion in terms of steamships. Some cliches never die...here's the well-known engineer tearing out his hair when the captain demands more speed. "She's gonna blow, Captain!" But this one is Dutch rather than Scottish.

I hope none of the kids reading Wizard Wells tried that refrigerator trick in the comfort of their own homes.

H. C. Kiefer is another under-appreciated artist. He's associated mostly with historical pieces but early on he did a fair amount of s-f and superhero strips like The Red Torpedo. I have a sneaking hunch that H.C. didn't draw a top on the dancing villainess. Important lines are missing in several panels (e.g. Pg 27 Pn 3) and in others they seem to have been added after the fact. Interesing that the Red Torpedo survives the death trap because somebody happens to see him drowning and saves his bacon. Batman would have got out on his own.

Jane Arden is as "meh" as ever. That spy bears a strong resemblance to William Powell. You think?

Crack Comics #13

Who the #^#$%#^%# ever green-lighted Milly the Model? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

Fred Guardineer's stiffly-drawn, stiffly-inked style has a certain appeal to me, though I honestly don't know why. How many non-Mandrakes did he clone anyway? At least Tor, the Magic Master doesn't klat drawkcab. Odd that Tor has a secret identity. I love how he wanders unobtrusively around the streets of Nome dressed in full regalia. Maybe he vibrates his body the way the Golden Age Flash did with his face molecules so nobody would recognize him.

Wizard Wells: "I've been bombarding this salt for 24 hours in the cyclatron! I wonder what will happen when I swallow some!" Coming next issue: Ghostly Adventures of the Late Wizard Wells!

I hadn't paid much attention to Paul Gustavson until I read the extensive interview with his son in Alter Ego. A real triple-threat: he wrote, drew, and lettered his stories as well as creating the characters. Can somebody fill me in on The Spider? He seems to be shooting Hawkeye / Green Arrow-style arrows but the captions call them "seals."

The Madam Fatal story's confusing because Madame de Farge looks more like a guy than Ms. Fatal, plus in a key panel (Pg 48 Pn 3) the colorist reverses their cloak colors. These Madam Fatal stories are all right as Golden Age stories go but other than the cross-dressing gimmick they're generic street-clothes hero stories.

Wonderworld Comics #11

Beautiful cover! It's no wonder Fine was in demand as a cover artist. His books would have jumped off the stands. By the way, here's the Red Bee cover I mentioned in my last comment (the $65,000 one):


Yarko the Great: this is what I meant about early Eisner layouts. It's a beautiful splash and there are some nice panels, but there's too much wasted space and silly angles like Pg 14 Pn 7. Maybe the four-tier pages cramped his style, but when he gets to do a big panel (Pg 17 Pn 4) he obscures the important action with an overlaid panel. What can I say? He learned.

Shorty Shortcake: What th' %&@$?

I like the Patty O'Day sort of character: spunky female reporter/photographer, etc. However Patty is done no favors by an approximate script and art that starts weak and gets worse panel by panel. I swear they drew page 31 in fifteen minutes flat. Say, is that L'Uomo Mascherato at the lower right of the splash panel?

Dr Fung doesn't get to do much Master Sleuthing in this crazy s-f story. The wheeled meanies are something to behold.

I like Munson Paddock's unique style. The art on Tex Maxon isn't as idiosyncratic as some of his other work. Once again though he demonstrates that he just doesn't like to draw faces. Am I seeing things, or has the art in this story been stretched vertically by cut-and-paste? The distribution of those big empty spaces looks like it was drawn with space for a banner atop each page but was re-formatted for printing here.

Don Quixote: Amusing art with amusement-free story.

This adventure of K-51 reads like an educational feature.

The lettering in this book is huge. Maybe they thought kids who read comics all had poor eyesight.

Smash Comics #25

What a beautiful art job Reed Crandall gives The Ray. I recognized him in the 70s despite the Lou Fine misidentification. It's so clearly his style of figures, his posing, his layouts. He never did much superhero work and his mature style was a bit staid for heroics, but his early hero work (clearly influenced by Fine) was doggoned nice. Crandall had quite a command of anatomy. You can identify The Ray's every muscle in the splash panel.

Midnight supports my growing belief that Jack Cole was seriously messed up. Here Cole's cruel streak shows when the crook runs a movie of him (the crook, not Cole) murdering a child. Even in the Code-less 40s other artists would have cheated the scene so as not to show the murder. Not ol' Injury-to-the-Eye Cole. The story is as much ersatz Dick Tracy as it is ersatz Spirit, what with exaggerated cartooning, weird names, and loony ideas like the one leading to Liver-Lips' demise. "I'll show those coppers! I'll ski down the stairs waving a battle-axe! Ooooops...!"

Here are my two cents' worth regarding Invisible Justice. I propose that the strip was not (mis)named after the hero but after the concept. Imagine a radio announcer: "...but as the invisible Hood, Kent Thurston brings his own brand of justice to the underworld: invisible justice!" Your theory may vary.

I like Gustavson's Jester. Nice art, nice costume, and a great gimmick, the grinning rubber ball. The Jester has the longest legs of any Golden Age hero.

Despite some decent drawing Black X suffers from outrageous cop outs. Case in point: Pg 36 Pn 7. The "surprise assault," appropriately staged in panel 6, turns into three tiny silhouettes and a big tree. What's the deal with "the Hindu [Batu] projects his image"? Does he teleport? Send an illusion of himself to confuse the crooks as well as the reader? We don't find out because we don't see Batu again until the fight is over and Batu has projected himself into a tiny silhouette menacing a few dots in the shade of--you guessed it--a big tree. I like how when Black X removes his disguise on page 35 he's wearing his monocle. Did he wear it under the costume glasses? Is the monocle permanently attached to his face?

Wildfire is an interesting character with a screwy origin. Who is The Lord of Fire? Anyway, this strip was an eye-opener when I first saw it years ago. I was gobsmacked by the sight of Jim Mooney drawing sexy super-babes. You must remember that the Jim Mooney I grew up with was the Jim Mooney of Supergirl, who was the least voluptuous, least sensual female of 1960s comics. Who would have known that a decade later he'd be drawing the likes of Pussycat?

Taken together this was a diverting bunch of books. Reading so many from the pre-Pearl Harbor period you realize that comics had already been at war for a couple of years, first with Nazi clones and then the real thing. Japan was also getting the superhero treatment though not as heavily as they'd get it a year or so down the road.

[crashryan]

I've never paid much attention to Bozo, so I don't know who/what he/it is.

For what it's worth, Bozo the Robot was actually the first (so far as I know) Iron Man. Metal suit with a guy inside, powered by imaginary science. He certainly was silly looking. In the beginning that mushroom on his head was a rotor which enabled him to fly (all the while spinning on his axis at 1000 RPM).

[paw broon]

The Rover, the British weekly storypaper, featured an even earlier version of an Iron Man with The Flaming Avenger in 1933.  Text with illos:-
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=58233
Prior to that, there was a British "pulp" character called The Iron Man but no gadgets, just a suit of chain mail.
This was around WW1
I wonder why the name Bozo. It doesn't quite strike fear in the hearts of the bad guys. (Ro)Bozo?
Spanish comics featured a title Rock Robot 1957, and this is a bloke in a robot suit - Kent Tyler, engineer.
Certainly pre-dating Iron Man.
https://comicbookplus.com/?cid=3565

[crashryan]

Paw, I'd forgotten all about The Flaming Avenger. I've read some of his stories. Of course he was a text-story character; Bozo might have been the first in comics. I may be wrong. A super-scientific guy in a metal suit seems like a natural extension of knight-in-armor stories.

As for Bozo himself, in his/its first appearance (Smash #1) the robot is created by an evil scientist to perform bank robberies and the like. It is radio-controlled by the scientist. Troubleshooter Hugh Hazzard sees the robot smash into a building and "follows him in." The robot returns to the scientist's lab. Hazzard pops out and arrests him. There is no explanation how Hazzard overcame the robot or how he got inside. At the end of the story Hazzard saves the robot from destruction and "adopts" it. He raises a mock toast to the robot and names it "Bozo." We don't know why.

For the next four issues Hazzard controls Bozo remotely, like Robot Archie. Bozo responds to voice commands and Hazzard talks to him as if he were a person but Bozo has no consciousness. In issue 6 Hazzard makes some changes to Bozo so he can control the robot from inside. From that point on Hazzard spends most of his time working Bozo from within though he can still use the remote control. In each episode a caption makes sure we know Hugh is inside Bozo by putting the word "inside" in boldface. In issue 12 the series title changes to "Bozo the Robot with Hugh Hazzard."

There you have it: more than you ever wanted to know about Bozo the Robot.

While we're on the subject of origins, I went back to Smash #1 and discovered that in his first appearance The Invisible Hood wasn't invisible! Have no fear. In #2 the Hood laments, "I'm called The Invisible Hood only because no one knows my true identity--how I wish I were really invisible! Invisibility! What a weapon!" In the very next panel one of those convenient Golden Age radio news flashes announces, "Hans van Dorn, famous chemist, believed to be working on a new phosphorescent chemical which causes invisibility, was kidnapped from his home today!" Guess what happens next.

Conveniently it's the hero's hood and robes that become invisible, saving him from the need to get naked to go fight crime.

[Robb_K]

I’ll also overlook the fact that a condor probably can’t teach a human to fly with human anatomy.

If you read his origin in Crack Comics #1 (he's the last story in that issue) it says "he put his keen mind to the task of studying the movements of wings, the body motions, air currents, balance and levitation..." and somehow this helps him fly. To borrow a line from another writer "This is what we call the hook, line and sinker and we have to get the reader to swallow it." 

Looking at the original story I notice the writer swiped some Tarzan elements (dead parents, raised by an animal group, able to communicate with said animals).

Did he also discover a way to make his bones hollow?   

Did the condors break his elbow joints in such a way that would allow his lower arm to bend in BOTH directions, so it could mimic birds' wings in flight?

[Robb_K]

The Black Condor

Crack Comics 1 - Origin Story

I actually like this story much more than The Black Condor's stories in Crack 12 and 13.  His origin was crafted using a lot of thought, trying to make the pseudo-science at least somewhat plausible.  I think it is interesting that the author chose this "American" character's place of origin to be in Central Asia, rather than somewhere where condors live (like Peru or Chile in South America, or California, in USA.  The action is good.  The artwork is very good.  I like the fact that The Black Condor uses his flying much, in defeating the villains (which wasn't used much, or made obvious, in his Crack 12 and Crack 13 stories)

There are problems that make it difficult to suspend my disbelief.  The child, orphaned as a non-verbal toddler, and adopted immediately by a Condor, whose first "native" language becomes condor squawking is later rescued and "adopted' by a "hermit" (not likely to be an American - or even a European-but more likely to be an Afghan, or Kirghiz, or Tadzjik or other Central Asian, rather than a fugitive from Western civilisation).  He would have had a tremendously difficult time learning a Human language, let alone moving from speaking and thinking like a Condor, to that of a Central Asian, and later having to move once again, this time from a Central Asian very differently structured and sounding, and vocalised European language (English).  He would have like had a very heavy "foreign" accent in English, unless he'd spend an extremely high amount of hours studying and practising English for years.  Yet, we find him still very young (mid-to-late 20s?) already posing as an American political office holder, whose fiancee would certainly KNOW that he is an imposter, or be very alarmed that her fiancee has had a severe trauma that has given him a dual personality syndrome that should have him examined by a psychiatrist, or, at least, a clinical psychologist.   

Also, as a baby, being raised by Condors, staying in his adopted mother's nest, and waiting for his clan members to bring food for him, he'd likely receive only pieces of raw animal meat from them.  They wouldn't likely bring him any fruit and vegetables.  Wouldn't he suffer from scurvy, and vitamin and mineral deficiencies?  Would he really survive into his twenties, living atop mountain peaks?  After learning to fly, would he fly down to lower elevations where plants grow and eat fruit?  How would he come to realise that it would be healthy for him?  Would it be similar to the situation of The Inuits of Greenland, northern Canada, and Alaska, who eat only meat from seals, walrus, and whales, who get all their vitamins and minerals from that meat, and still remain relatively healthy?

Something I've always wondered about these adventure stories that take place in deserts, where NO plantlife is shown in ANY panel!  How do people survive in those areas?  What do they eat?  Even if they are supposed to hunt animals there to eat, WHAT do the large animals, there, eat?  The carnivores can eat smaller animals, but what do the animals they eat consume???  What do the raiders' horses eat.  There wasn't even a blade of grass shown!  What do camels eat there.  Not even one withered salt bush or tamarisk, or acacia tree shown in any panel.


Crack 12 - The Black Condor
This story's plot of mine owners taking advantage of their workers by paying them little, and having them work in extremely dangerous working conditions, and having "Senator Tom" crusade for legislation to redeem them from their dangerous situation is a good one.  The Condor uses his power of flying to help him capture the villains.  The artwork is more detailed, and anatomy is more defined.  Yet, I prefer the older style artwork in his Crack 1 Condor story.  I do like the bright colours of the panels in this story.  I notice the influence of Will Eisner's work, in the detail of the characters' faces.  The action scenes are well drawn and staged, with interesting camera angles.


Crack 13 - Black Condor
I do like the addition of the draped fabric wings that would aid in The Condor's ability to hang in the air currents and push air to help him move through the air.  Still, there is not enough power in his arms to propel his heavy body weight through the air.  He should have added a metal beak attached to his face, to rip apart the flesh of his victims.  After taking over the identity of Senator Tom Wright, the senator's father thinks his own daughter is either so "gullible", insensitive, or had such a superfluous relationship with her fiancee (Wright0, that she wouldn't even notice that another man was attempting to impersonate him.  Really much too difficult to believe.  How could even her father "teach" The Condor all he'd need to know to make ALL The Senator's close family and friends, and, especially someone so intimate with him as his fiancee, not notice immediately, that he is NOT her lover?  Was this pairing an arranged marriage?  Although The Black Condor does fly in this story, his flaying wasn't used to help him defeat the villains.  So, it is an interesting back story for the series; but it seems to have been a completely extraneous detail. What was the point in creating a superhero with only the power of flight if the author doesn't use it for the raison d'etre of his series' main character?

The artwork is more detailed and accurate than in Crack 1(although, i like the style of the origin story more).  I like the bright coloured panels.  I like the devious plan of the villain.  The story works well. Although I'd rather have read it in 20+ pages, even with the 3 panels per tier.  It doesn't make me interested to read more of the series' stories (as his Crack #1 story did.



Smash Comics 25 - The Ray
After reading The Ray's story, I still don't know what super powers he has or how he got them.  Can someone please provide me a link to his origin story?

This story is a fairly common type used by the late 1930s and early 1940s superhero genre.  And the superhero's alter ego being a newspaper reporter seems to have straight from "Superman'.  So, this wasn't all that interesting to me.

Smash Comics 14 - The Ray (Origin Story)
The Ray's alter ego, an adventure-seeking reporter, volunteers to travel up into the stratosphere in an experimental balloon.  With no oxygen to breathe (no mask protection nor air or oxygen pumped to him), a cosmic storm sends beams (rays) of "cosmic light", which shrink his body to very small size, and a new form of him rises into Space, as "The Ray".  Why did he not die, almost instantly, due to asphyxiation?
The balloon returns from Space and headlines tell of the reporter being torn away from it, and is "missing in Space" (e.g. presumed dead).  A devious foreign spy arrives at The Professor (inventor of the super bomb he was testing) to kill him and steal his plans to sell to evil governments for their wars).  The Ray arrives just after the villains leave with the plans. Naturally, The Ray catches up with the villains - apparently shooting directly to them (in jig time) travelling along their car's front light beams.  This was not depicted in the artwork, but, unfortunately only described in a narrative box).  The villains shoot bullets at him, and he is not affected.  But, we don't see the bullets bouncing off him, or bouncing off a force field protecting him.  We just see the word "Bang!"  This is TERRIBLE staging.  What are comic books for, if NOT illustrating the action, so the reader can see it.  Better to have a proper book with only text.  The Ray shoots magnetic rays from his fingertips which pulls the villains' escape airplane to him.  This is not a very interesting character to my taste.   The Ray beats up the villains and delivers them to jail, and returns the stolen plans to the professor, telling him to sell them to The US government.  not a very inspired new superhero nor an invented, new, interesting back story.  It seemed this writer's job was to invent a new Superman clone, that could grab thousands of new readers, bringing lots of money to his publisher; But the writer didn't have his heart in the task. 

[FraBig]

After reading The Ray's story, I still don't know what super powers he has or how he got them.  Can someone please provide me a link to his origin story?

The Ray's powers are very inconsistent throughout his appearances. The most recurring power is his ability to fly by riding rays of light that stem from other sources. He has a vast array of other powers connected to light, but they sometimes appear and sometimes don't. His origin story can be read in Smash Comics #14, which is also his first appearance.

Here's the link to the issue: https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=36637 (page 34)

[The Australian Panther]

GhostMan's objective was;-

  I chose Lou Fine for this posting for several reasons. One is he is my absolute inspirational favourite Golden-Age artists (mind you the superlative Reed Crandall is a very close second). Woefully, there is no formal biographical book published on his life and there should be. Despite his wide influence on comic book artists, his incredible work needs praise sung for this age. I have chosen his work on three titles to best showcase his phenomenal talent at his creative apex.

Crack Comics #12 The Black Condor
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=27911

Black Condor and the Ray are the 2 characters Lou Fine is most associated with.
So,  did he choose them or was he assigned to do them?     
So, what are we looking at here?
GhostMan wrote:-

  Mindful of what K1ngcat had pointed out, I went back and visually assessed and reviewed a number of works attributed to Fine. I ran into three categories,
one was that I could detect what was authentically his work.
Two, was some of the errantly attributed works appeared to be collaborations. In appearance it looks as if Fine he had drawn framework outlines of backgrounds and/or characters and they were then completed by other pencillers and inkers.
Lastly, works that Fine had nothing at all to do with but that looked very purposely similar in style (some better than others). It was said that this occurred when Fine couldn't meet issue his deadlines due to his deliberate, unrushed working style.

But, what Crash wrote absolutely floored me

Re-reading the references to Fine in Michael Schumacher's Eisner biography I was struck by two points. One was that Fine had absolutely no interest in story, much to Eisner's frustration, since he hoped to have Fine branch out into writing and other areas. All Fine wanted to do was go off in the corner and draw. 

And yes, Crash, I know that's not your opinion, you are just passing on the information.   
'To have absolutely no interest in story' seems to me to be impossible if you are working in a narrative medium. But to have 'absolutely no interest in being a writer' and initiating concepts would make more sense. And I can see Eisner being frustrated at that. Clearly he was a fan of Lou's visual story-telling.
In fact, I find myself wondering, how much Eisner was visually influenced by Lou's style?
SO. Crack Comics #12.
So, from that start, I found myself evaluating Lou's work, not from it's visual excellence, which has been spoken about, but to look at his story-telling skills. 
If FINE had anything to do with that cover, it was as a brief sketch inked (Badly) by someone else.
The Splash page has all the elements of a cover, wonder if it was originally intended to do double duty? Which was a not unheard of pracitce.
Which makes me think, that for an artist who was proud of his work, it must have been quite frustrating to have cover work cluttered with Logos  and Boxes as this one was. 
Page two - the classic 9 box 'Noughts and crosses' grid.
I have come to realize that limitation can stimulate creativity.
The way many artists use that grid effectively is astonishing. Eisner loved it, and so did that Eisner fan, Steve Ditko.
What does lou do here?
Goes from above ground to below ground, keeps a narrative going [through conversation] through panedl 4 to panel 5 in a different location and two different characters And repeats that again between panel 7 and panel 8.   And in those 9 panels we are introduced to 3 groups of people all of whom flesh out the narrative.
Page 3, great first panel, says in one panel and few words what it would take a lesser creator half a page to communicate.
In this page he changes perspective 7 times, and uses his art to drive the story along, economically. Also, unlike many golden age stories, and too many current comic books, the narrative never wavers, no sideline distractions.
On the next page the heading ,
"The charge of murder puts the town under martial law, the militia marches down upon the strikers"
is masterfully emphasised by the black silhouettes  of the rifle stacks in the foreground.   
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that this story would have been quite topical at the time.
So, if you were a kid, picking up this comic, you would have read a story dealing with issues dealing with exploitation of workers, corruption [implied] in congress and the law and strike-breaking.
Who says you don't learn anyting from comics?.           

     

[The Australian Panther]

Crack Comics #13 The Black Condor
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=36421

Ah! So it turns out Jaspar Crow ['Jim Crow'] was the villain who murdered Tom Wright in the first place.
There is certainly a strong political and social undertone to the Black Condor' stories.
No visual pyrotechnics on this page, but;- Crow is drawn in a very intimidating position, Wendy is depicted huge in contrast to the two background figures, who are in a huddle, and the narrative says they are keeping a secret from her.
However the whole idea of keeping the secret that Tom is not her Tom, from her, strikes me as highly perverse. In any case are we really expected to believe that a woman wouldn't know the difference?
Panel 1, second page. Lou had a very idiosyncratic way of depicting trees. Panel #4, check out the General's face - conveys fury, urgency, power. Love to see that panel blown up to A4.
Last three panels, nothing wrong with the art, but this is a narrative device that annoys me.
The main character [Condor] missed the significance of the tramp, but it's done in such a way that the reader does not miss it. 
Re the 'Mad Bomber' I'm amazed at how topical some of these Condor stories are.
But this one is not as coherent as the one in Crack Comics #12
In the disaster and chaos that would have eventuated with the destruction of 10 skyscrapers, how can Tom accidentally be in the same place as the bomber? Then he leaves him, goes back to his dwellings, puts on a disguise and them finds him again. 
I blame the writer, not the illustrator. 
This, to me is an example of doing the best you can when illustrating a second-rate script.
Scrounge wrote,

Seems to me that a reliable remote control for bombs would have a practical use in businesses that need to set off bombs (construction, mining, etc.) so the general could still make money. Also members of the military tend to be more patriotic than others and blowing up the senate doesn't seem to be that patriotic. 

 
Your points, I think, back my my contention that the supplied script wasn't that good. Maybe Lou liked the challenge of doing what he could with lousy scripts to see if he can make it work.
Re Patriotism and Generals. At this moment in history and at many times in history, there are many regimes run by Dictators who were Generals, who take over the control of the country 'for it's own good' Congress and the Senate are there to carry out the will of the people, which often is contrary to the will of the military, so that makes sense.
Blowing up a random 10 buildings does not, unless the intent is to impose martial law, in which case, blowing up the senate would probably not be necessary.
Fine's work is of course excellent, the script is not. Which backs up my contention that Lou illustrated, but did not write scripts. Or have the freedom to change them much.
             
       

[The Australian Panther]

Wonderworld Comics #11 The Flame
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=26912

This was done in early 1940 and the two Crack Comics we have looked at were done a year later in early 1941.
What a difference. He has certainly grown, learned, improved.
He is not yet using the 'Noughts and Crossed' grid here, and the lettering takes up about 1/3 of the page.
I believe in the later work, he is probably doing his own lettering.
The GhostMan wrote,

Now onto my assessment and thoughts on Wonderworld Comics #11. The initial visually compelling feature I notice is how Fine imbues personality and character that fully imparts substantial dimension into individuals at interplay or just standing motionless. That's something usually not found in comic books especially to the extent that Fine portrays. 

Yes, and I have already pointed out the astonishing detail he later put into his faces, so the visuals of his faces contribute to and emphasize the narrative elements. 
So, the Flame.
A missionary puts his son into a basket and sets it afloat!
Moses!  And like Moses, he grows to adulthood with a different people than his original culture.
Which makes me wonder how much ERB was influenced by the Moses story? Probably subliminally.
Superman certainly was, noted by the names Jor-el and Kal-el, which have a Hebrew influence. 
The flood panels lack the dynamism that Lou would show later.
Panel #1 (our) page 5 is reminiscent of an oriental painting.
The idea that Monks would see a baby as a heaven-sent future leader, is correct, so some study has gone into this.
(Our) panel 7;- nice that there is no dialogue during the ceremony.   
There is an issue that the editor should have picked up. on page #1 the girl begins to tel the story, at the end on page #8. the man says, 'So, you see that the Flame is the one man who can help us!' as if he has been telling the story.
The usual constant change in perspective from panel to panel.
I like how Lou uses changes in size  for emphasis.
Page # 11 he makes the field pieces gigantic to the eye, while keeping them in perspective. 
Last page:- The dictator is in shade and wearing dark brown, facially very sinister. Is that a Hitler mustache?
That's certainly a Hitler uniform. Next we see him cowering in his chair. 
That panel of Flame pummelling his face is amazing! Love to see that one blown up too! 
Ghostman, thank you, you have gotten me to look in detail at Lou Fine's work, and I have learned a new respect for him.
Cheers!
         

[The Australian Panther]

I will be back monday, with a new post.
Some bits and pieces.
Reed Crandall.
He would be a good subject for the Reading Group at a later date, if someone would like to take that on.
Molly the model.
Quite prepared to believe that STAN liked the alliteration and changed it to 'Millie the Model'
The Jester : Marvel in the 70's had a villain called the Jester who had almost exactly the same costume.
I wonder that, to my knowledge, nobody has done a definitive look at what names, concepts and characters have been borrowed by Marvel and DC from PD Golden Age Characters. It's quite a significant list. Stan Lee and Roy Thomas were masters of the art.     

[crashryan]

You're right, Panther, Lou Fine didn't write his stories. In fact in an interview Eisner described his frustration at Fine refusing to do anything but draw. He wanted Lou to branch out into writing but Mr F had no interest.

Edited to add: Sorry, I was reading the comments newest first and didn't realize you'd already addressed this. I apologize for repeating myself. Anyway, when I said "story" I meant the writing end of story, not visual storytelling, which obviously interested Fine quite a bit!

[SuperScrounge]

Wonderworld Comics #11

The Flame
Holy Moses, another superhero origin that uses elements of Moses story. (Only instead of water, this hero baptizes you with Flame! Muhahahahaha! ;-) Sorry, couldn't resist.) Is King Rodend related to Hitler? They kind of look alike. ;-) Storywise the origin is the most important part with the war story almost an afterthought. The art is not as dynamic as the later Black Condor tales, but it's not bad.

Yarko
If the gem kills those who to whom it doesn't belong, then how can anyone return it?

In Guatemala
Ummm... yeahhhhh... probably aimed at children.

Patty O'Day
Very simplistic.

Dr. Fung
No explanation of these creatures and their civilization? Bummer.

Tommy Taylor in Norway
Clearly aimed at kids (poor kids).

Tex Maxon
Another simplistic story.

Armour vs. Automobiles
Eh, okay.

Spark Stevens
Okay.

K-51 Spies at War
Okay.

The Comicscope
Wow! I can't wait to get one! ;-)

Hey, the GCD says Lou drew the cover for Fantastic Comics that appears on the back interior cover. Nice job!

[SuperScrounge]

Ah! So it turns out Jasper Crow ['Jim Crow']

JaspAr not JaspEr.

Which makes me wonder how much ERB was influenced by the Moses story? Probably subliminally.
Superman certainly was, noted by the names Jor-el and Kal-el, which have a Hebrew influence.

I think people tend to forget how religious earlier generations of Americans were. Burroughs was raised in the late 1800s so probably went to church every Sunday. That being said, aside from Tarzan I can't think of too many of his characters who were raised by another culture. John Carter, Carson of Venus, etc. were usually adults who ended up in another culture.

As for Jor-El and Kal-El. I believe Jerry Siegel's first use of Jor-El was in a non-Superman science fiction police story. Superman's father was called Jor-L when he was first named (which I think was the comic strip rather than comic book). I don't think he was called Jor-El until after Siegel and Shuster had been fired by DC. The Kal-El name might have been created by writer Bill Finger.

The Jester : Marvel in the 70's had a villain called the Jester who had almost exactly the same costume.
I wonder that, to my knowledge, nobody has done a definitive look at what names, concepts and characters have been borrowed by Marvel and DC from PD Golden Age Characters. It's quite a significant list. Stan Lee and Roy Thomas were masters of the art.

I think you'll find Roy was the master of lifting unused names and characters from dead publishers.

Here's a list I started years ago at NitCentral Same Name, Different Company

In fact in an interview Eisner described his frustration at Fine refusing to do anything but draw. He wanted Lou to branch out into writing but Mr F had no interest.

Some artists are like that. While most artists could write, some are very uncomfortable at it and prefer to have someone else do the 'wordy stuff' while they focus on visuals.

If you've ever hung around a webcomics forum you'll see something like 100 "Writers looking for Artists" vs. 1 "Artist looking for Writer" threads.

[The Australian Panther]

Scrounge, Thanks for the spelling correction. Fixed, Should have seen the whole thing before I edited and posted!

Thanks for that list, but it's not comprehensive.
As i spend time on CB+, I notice more and more.
Mr E. - Think Ditko did a Mr E. in his latter personal work.
Black Orchid.
There is also this
Ms Marvel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharon_Ventura
Sharon Ventura, also known as She-Thing, is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. She has used the pseudonym Ms. Marvel and has served as a member of the Fantastic Four and of the female wrestlers known as the Grapplers.
And they are just quickly off the top of my head.

I think you'll find Roy was the master of lifting unused names and characters from dead publishers. 

Oh, believe me,  STAN was no slouch. I have come to realize that Stan was very much aware of the competition and didn't hesitate to use an idea or name that was currently unused. Not to mention cannibalizing his own Atlas back Catalogue. 
Daredevil? Wonderman? Nighthawk? Quicksilver?
The Angel? Dr Strange? Doc Strange?

And this list doesn't take into account Australian or British characters.

Cheers!

   

[SuperScrounge]

Earlier I said I was thinking some thoughts about Fine's work, and that was true, but then I had to focus on finishing up the February issue of my club's newsletter and that disrupted things, but I'll try to remember what I was thinking and hopefully it'll make sense instead of being a rambling mess.

It seems like for standalone work (covers, maybe a panel or two inside a story) he focuses more on the realistic look of a figure, whereas for a dynamic sequence or story he's more concerned with the action and drawing the eye from one panel to the next and there is less concern with the reality of the figures drawn.

Not that he's the only artist who works this way. Burne Hogarth does the same thing. His Tarzan work can be very dynamic, but if you focus on the figures there are problems with them.

Is this a balance that comes with being a slow artist as Fine was reputed to be? To get things done in time does an artist focus on dynamics to cover the sloppier figure work? Good question.

Presumably when he left comics for advertising he was getting more money for less work and he could focus more on making the figures look right, but that's just a guess on my part.

[crashryan]

Mr E. - Think Ditko did a Mr E. in his latter personal work.

I don't remember Ditko doing an "Mr E." He did a ton of "Mr A" though. It's funny how many ways creators came up with to use the Mystery > Mr E sound-alike. Mr E, Mister Reece (Sexton Blake villain), Ms Tree (female detective), Mr Ease (don't remember where I saw that one), etc.

[SuperScrounge]

It's funny how many ways creators came up with to use the Mystery > Mr E sound-alike. Mr E, Mister Reece (Sexton Blake villain), Ms Tree (female detective), Mr Ease (don't remember where I saw that one), etc.

The gal in the purple hood in my avatar pic is named Ms. Terial based on the, rarely used these days, word Mysterial. Came across it in the dictionary one day.

[The Ghost Man]

Reed Crandall.
He would be a good subject for the Reading Group at a later date, if someone would like to take that on.[/b]

I see your Bat-Signal AP and I'd be more than happy to accommodate at a future date of your choosing.

Sincere thanks to all for their excellent and elucidating commentary!