[Robb_K]

Good morning or evening (wherever you may be).  This fortnight's Reading Group's comic book for reading and review is "Flip Falcon in The 4th Dimension Collection 1", collected from Fox Features' "Fantastic Comics" # 1-11, from 1939 and 1940.  It is made up of early and primitive Science Fiction/Fantasy stories from near the beginning of the comic book industry, when the emphasis was a LOT more on newspaper comic strip-style fantasy than on the current level of scientific knowledge.  This compilation contains a wide variety of plot styles and settings for their star SCi-FI scientist/superhero and his loyal, amorous, Ladyfriend sidekick assistant, Adele.  The series' hero's name was changed from "Flick" Falcon, to "Flip" Falcon, after its first three issues of Fantastic Comics, when it was realised that from a distance the word, "Flick" appeared exactly as the scatological, offensive 4-letter slang word, especially in Fox's print font.



Flip Falcon in The 4th Dimension Collection 1 can be found here:   https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=61175

I look forward to all your posts describing what you think of these stories.  They are all very short, taking up only 66 pages in total, so I think we can cover them all, as they take up only the size of one standard early 1940s 10 cent comic book.  The artwork and storytelling is fairly primitive for the genre, as it was so early in the development of comic books.  And the story telling styles and settings cover one of the widest and loosest ranges I've seen from a single series.  Fox Features' early 1940s production always brings up controversy and a myriad of strong opinions and interesting back stories.  So, I hope you all enjoy them and have a lot to say about them, perhaps including information about the artists and little-known back stories about the series' production.

[The Australian Panther]

Interesting!
'Orville Wells'?

[Robb_K]

Interesting!
'Orville Wells'?

No doubt a pen name.  If I had been a budding writer and wanted to eventually have a respected career, I, too, would have been afraid to use my legal name on these weird and wild, but poorly thought out, fantasy stories.

[bowers]

Words fail me.... Cheers, bowers

[Robb_K]

Words fail me.... Cheers, bowers

You're speechless in awe of this volumes' wide range of unexpected plot ideas and interesting ancient artwork?

[bowers]

 None of the above, Robb! It's just so awful it defies description. Cheers, bowers

[Robb_K]

None of the above, Robb! It's just so awful it defies description. Cheers, bowers

Fox wasn't known for top-level quality.  It's no wonder that people were getting in line to sue him when he finally ceased operations.  He was probably glad to go to prison so his creditors couldn't harass him, in person or on the telephone.    -And discriminating comic book fans couldn't ridicule him for giving the comic book industry a bad name!   

[bowers]

 Maybe reading some of the bad ones helps us appreciate the good ones all the more! Cheers, bowers

[Robb_K]

Maybe reading some of the bad ones helps us appreciate the good ones all the more! Cheers, bowers

That's for sure!  A strong understatement.  As a former editor, I can testify that this series is a perfect editor's dream, chock full of examples of what NOT to do.  That is part of my reason for its choice, to point out that the early history of the Comics Industry was full of experimentation by young artists and storywriters who took advantage of lots of openings to jump into, trying to barge their way into the story writing and illustration field, during the scramble by publishers to take advantage of The Great Depression's need for low-cost entertainment's boom in the popularity of newspaper comics, and larger demand to read such material in more permanent packaging and in larger sizes.  And many of these new publishers were often recently-started magazine publishers, who had had no previous publishing experience in the book publishing field.  So even many the publishers and their editors had little experience, and so, were experimenting quite a bit. 

[bowers]

 Couldn't agree more! In the '30s, many U.S. comics " studios and workshops" seemed to be little better than sweatshops, exploiting artists and writers for shamefully low pay. Quantity seemed to be more important than quality. You had to sell a lot of ten cent comics to make a profit, but some shops really pushed it to the limits.
On the other hand, women and minority artists were able to find work in the field because of these shops. Let's also not forget the countless young artists who learned their craft here before going on to much more lucrative assignments. Cheers, bowers

[Robb_K]

Although QQ and Crash have family and personal commitments right now, limiting their participation, and Paw and a few others (including myself) have personal projects going on, I still hope a few of us will be able to get into the specific details of some of these stories.  I found it interesting, if not too wide a spectrum, to set as a setting "given", that The 4th Dimension, as described, is a "grab bag" that housesThe Future, The Past, The Realm of The Dead, The Realm The Paranormal, The Realm of ALL Outer Space (including stars and planets and fictional Space Monsters), as well as Supernatural beings, such as The Devil (Lucifer), and assorted evil Demons), as well as other beings from ancient, long-time popular fiction.  And, in some stories, when our hero's machine catapults him (seemingly undirected) randomly into The 4th Dimension, he might go to any one of those reams without warning.  In other stories, apparently, using his machine's un-shown direction dials or buttons, he can direct himself to exactly which years in the past or future, or which exact location, such as a specific planet.  So, it seems to me that the author or artist, or both have set too wide a scope of possibilities to even be remotely plausible, or make any logical sense, as well as provide no evidence at all as to how things work.  So, that gives the reader the feeling that EVERYTHING is "magic", as if the story teller is a five-year-old, making up these ideas in his mind, in a kind of "what IF THIS would happen?" daydream.  To ME, that kind of story COULD work as a "dream story", BUT, even then, would still be a lot more palatable SHOWING the hero moving dials or pushing buttons on his machine, and limiting the scope of what his machine can do.  Perhaps having one machine handle the time period aspects, and another handling the physical location aspects, with a 3rd handling the transportation into and out of The 4th Dimension.  And  each accompanied by some gobbledigook that sounds like high-powered scientific double-talk, which, IF not looked at for long enough to be sure that it is nonsensical jibberish, might be overlooked by the reader, and so, "accepted", preserving the acceptable level of suspense of belief (so the reader can continue to "live in the story", rather than stop reading to question its premise).

[crashryan]

Flip Falcon!

I've never read this compilation before. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I liked it. There's something about the breathless pace and the torrent of odd ideas that makes it seem as if the creators were enthusiastic about their job. That they were having fun. I don't know if that's true. As has already been said, early comic art shops were sweat shops run by men with little interest in anything other than selling as many comic books as possible. Victor Fox was the cheapest chiseler of all the cheap chiselers in the comic book racket.

Let's set such considerations aside. Who needs reality when you have the Fourth Dimension--whatever it is. No one here seems to agree on what the fourth dimension is, how Flip's machine functions within the fourth dimension, or what creatures inhabit which worlds there.

I read both of the compilations, not just the one assigned, to get a clear view of the character's development (if we can apply that grand term to these rudimentary stories). What I got was the distinct impression that there were at least three separate writers on the series, none of whom read the others' stories.

We start out with a more or less coherent serial, featuring Flip and Adele on Mars. They encounter three-armed bad guys and slave giants. So far so good. Then that storyline screeches to a halt. The third story gives lip service to the earlier chapters. The three-armed men with their Dictascopic eyes short circuit Flip's 4D machine and send him to a far-future Earth to meet some early Mekon prototypes. After that Mars and the three-armed men are forgotten. In the following episode Flip and Adele visit Mercury to be menaced by the monster Heidites. They leave, promising to return to help the Mercurians save their planet from destruction.

But they don't. Instead Flip goes alone into a Dali-esque version of the fourth dimension where he fights Lucifer. This is apparently not "our" Lucifer, but a giant world-wrecking superbeing along the lines of Galactus. This story introduces Flip's "beam" which comes in handy many times in the future. The artwork, which has never been very strong, is some of the worst in the series. It reminds me of Don Rico.

The next episode, likely drawn by the same guy, finds Flip visiting Mercury--only this isn't the same Mercury he visited a few issues earlier. Instead of dwarf men and slave giants we get insectoid bipeds ruled by a mixed-species "queen" who has the hots for poor Flip.

The next episode opens with Flip working on something to "help the serviles on Mercury." This seems to refer to the first Mercury, the one with the slave-giants. It doesn't really matter because Flip and Adele never make it there. The ensuing adventure, with grinning spider-men and our heroes wrapped in cocoons, is one of the weirdest. The clumsy art (not by the same artist as last issue, I'm pretty sure) makes the story even creepier.

The big surprise in the next issue is that Adele has turned into "Peg" and Flip's machine is used for time travel. He has a ho-hum adventure with medieval invaders and a lost tribe of Amazons. The main interest is watching the characters turn into Alex Raymond swipes and back.

Flip is still travelling in time in the next episode, a twist on the "use time travel to get rich" theme. The twist is that the party wishing to become rich is not some greedy bad guy but the representative of an NGO who plans to use the money to help war orphans! I like that the pirates think Flip is the Devil (not Lucifer, mind you) and flee to their deaths. The two panels showing this scene appear to have been dashed off in the last thirty seconds before the mailman arrived.

Adele is back for the last episode in this compilation. Not that she has much to do. When she accompanies Flip on an expedition her major role is to scream for help. She was more useful when she stayed home to hold down the fort. The electric shock beam she sent in an early story saved Flip's bacon in the nick of time. In the present episode Flip becomes something of a superhero. His "dimension beam" allows him to fly and somehow it puts a giant bird under Flip's power when he flies around it in a circle.

This is the end of our reading group selection and I won't go into detail on the rest of the series. Some general notes might be of interest. The fly-in-a-circle stunt becomes a regular gimmick, though instead of putting the target under Flip's power, completing the circle blows the target to bits. A series of episodes sets up a new version of the fourth dimension, which is now the home of "demi-beings" both good and evil. For a couple of episodes Flip has no steady companion, instead helping a new gal in each story. Peg comes back for one story, and Lucifer makes a reappearance. The last couple of episodes have the clunky art I blamed on Don Rico and the stories echo some of the themes in the earlier tales.

My theory is that the space-oriented Adele stories, the demi-men stories, and the Peg stories were written by different authors having little or no contact with each other. Nor with an editor, for all I can tell. Twice the maybe-Don-Rico stories try to establish a continuity of sorts. However unrelated episodes keep popping up. Why Peg replaced Adele is anyone's guess. Considering that the Peg stories have markedly different art and lettering suggests that the author didn't know the name of Flip's sidekick. Or maybe he just didn't care. Certainly the editor didn't care, since he didn't see fit to change her name.

Thanks, Robb, for this entertaining oddity. Reading it was way more fun than it should have been.

[paw broon]

Sitting at home waiting out the storm, I had a look at Flip Falcon.
As it says on the comps page 15, "Stunned, speechless with surprise" Well, stunned and speechless, but surprised? More like, can't believe it!
And on page 16, "It's all so unbelievable"  How true.  But it's taking my mind away from worrying about the Red Warning. The country has just stopped. 
I have to admit, I'm quite enjoying the sheer weirdness and nonsense.
A bit of Gulliver as well, teamed with The Time Machine.

[Robb_K]

Flick (Flip) Falcon in The 4th Dimension

(1) Flick and Adele on Mars
Flick jumps inside his machine's chamber, and is flung into Outer Space, randomly to Mars.  His watch has reversed direction, and his own body has flipped from one side to the other, with his heart now on his right side.  Ignoring that Flick survives the completely airless trip through Space before arriving at Mars, and the usual Space Fantasy problem of Humans being able to breathe the super-thin, oxygen and nitrogen-poor atmosphere of Mars, the body reversing with the direction of time makes the scenario's acceptance even more unlikely for most readers.  A giant grabs him and throws him into a city inhabited by green, 3-armed people.  To escape, Flick dives forward, and rolls his body into a ball, to activate moving into The Past.  The giant follows him, his hand sticking out of the machine, into Flick's present day laboratory on Earth.  Flick turns off the machine to end that danger.

A lot of nonsensical things occur in this story.  And absolutely nothing about how the 4th Dimension works or how Flick's machine wrorks is even attempted to be explained.  Also, the number of pages is too small to allow room for both fitting in a proper setting, developing characters ,and also developing any kind of plot.  So, just as the "story" starts to get interesting, the story ends abruptly, with the reader feeling cheated.  That situation is true for every episode in the series.

(2) Flick Returns To Mars

Flick and Adele land on the opposite side of Mars from The 3-Armed invaders, aiming to stop the latter from invading Earth, after failing to convince The US Military leaders that Aliens from Mars plan to attack Earth. There, he meets a large group of "dwarf Martians, and a full-sized Martian woman, both of whom want him to help fight against The 3-Armed invaders.  This so-called "Story" is way too short to bring the reader much.  It ends abruptly with Flick telling The Martian "Dwarf people" that he will help them fight The invaders.

(3) Power of The Slave Giants' Goddess
Flick and Adele attend a great banquet, at which plans for defeating The Invaders are to be discussed. Adele is chosen to act as The Slave Giants' Goddess, who can break the control The 3-Armed Invaders have on The Giants.  On their way to reach The Giants, Flick fights a giant riverine or lake serpent in a swamp.  The Dwarfs lead the couple to the Temple of The Giants' Goddess.  The worshipping Giants fioght over which of the Stastue of The Goddess, or Adele, is the "REAL" Goddess, and they break the statue.  Adele takes it's place on her pedestal, and orders them to obey her commands and stop obeying The Invaders' leaders. Immediately the "Story" ends abruptly.

(4) Flip and Adele in The Land of The Slave Giants
The 3-Armed Invaders see The now-named Flip and Adele, and send Atom Disruptors (not explaining what they are or can do) trying to kill the couple. The Dwarfs' city is destroyed, and Flip and Adele are thrown clear, but are grabbed by a Giant, and toss them into The Invaders' Laboratory, where The Couple find The Invaders' OWN 4th Dimension machine.  Flip adjusts its settings, and sends the pair out into Space, where they land on a plant's rings (which is a tiny, flat strip of solid matter, wide only enough for 2 Humans to stand, yet it has gravity to hold them on it.  I thought that the scientists by 1940, already knew that the rings of Saturn and Neptune were made of millions of small asteroidal material.  Not only is this so ridiculous, but the flat band of matter is moving fast enough for them to notice they are moving towards the host planet.  Itr takes them to a large city where they meet robot-like men, each having a large, robot-like claw. They are caught by The Claw Men, and thrown imprisoned in a cage.  Although Flip set the date for 1940, to return home, but he landed a million years into the future!  The Claw Men are future Humans, but are just skeletons wearing "Life Suits" that provide them a robotic life. Flip grabs his guard's Life Suit, ripping it off him.  He tells the dying man to take them to their Time Machine, and send them back to 1940.

A very fanciful story, with more to it than most of the others.  But it is still not very well thought out, and even MORE unscientific than the others, IF that is possible.


(5) The Doomed World
Flip and Adele travel to Mercury, after seeing evidence of intelligent life there.  And for the first time in the series, the breathing issue is addressed ( to SOME extent (but not a convincing one).  The author tells the reader that they are wearing "oxygen suits", - but we see no visual evidence of the "suits".  They are completely invisible. The couple reaches the city they saw on their machine's viewing screen, and are met by chicken-like beings. They communicate with Flip through a hat that lets beings read other beings' thoughts, regardless of the languages they speak.  Monsters from Mercury's Hot Side, that secrete blazing hot slime from their pours and breathe fire, attack. They carry the heroes to their land.  Their heat-resistant suits save them from the intense heat of ther direct rays of the close Sun.  However, that isn't believable, because Flips facfe and hands are uncovered, and Adele's are, as well as her arms and legs.  They would all be burnt to a crisp, and the rest of their body would, as well, because the space betrween their bodies and their shirts and pants would allow the heat to seep in.  I don't think that even a sealed suit of any kind would protect against the 800 degrees Fahrenheit boiling their blood and brains, and all their bodies' cells.  That would bring death in a matter of a few seconds.  If Humans need thick Sunblock to prevent sunburn in 80 degrees of direct Sunlight from 93 million miles away, think what 800 degree Sunlight would do from 36 million miles. Flip .tabs one of the giant monsters with a sharp bone he found, and miraculously, ALL the other monsters are gone, with no explanation.  And Flip walks away, carrying adele, presumably, ALL the way back to the Dark side of Mercury, where The Chicken-People dwell.  By the way, temperatures on The Dark Side of the planet can get down to negative 290 Degrees F at the poles at night.  Humans could only survive with lead-lined spacesuits in the grey (twilight Area between the Hot and Shade sides of The planet, and keep moving at 3.6 km per hour to stay in a "Safe Zone".  They'd need to avoid all but the least radiation.  So, of course there should be no life there, and The Heroes would have been killed as soon as they left Earth's atmosphere, but would have died almost instantly even if The 4th Dimension transport took them frm their machine on Earth, directly landing on the planet's surface.

(6) Flip fights against Sir Lucifer
Flip notices as "disturbance" somewhere in The 4th Dimension, and flies there blindly, without knowing what or where it is. What guts!  Lucifer, a Giant Demon who destroys planets for entertainment, comes accross Flip, but can't get past ther latter's protective beam.  Flip then encircles Lucifer, placing a protection beam completely around the demon, trapping him.  Then Flip finds out (we aren't told how) that something is going wrong in his laboratory on earth.  A robber has broken in and threatens Adele.  Flip returns, just in time to keep the thug from kidnapping her.  And the "story" ends with the couple on the roof, gazing out at the stars, with Flip telling Adele that Lucifer is trapped and, at least, temporarily, kept from destroying The Earth. 
What does a Human criminal trying to kidnap Adele for ransom have to do with a scientist/adventurer seeking thrills and scientific knowledge in The 4th Dimension???
Weird plot, eh?

(7) Flip Battles The Insect people of Mercury
In this episode, we actually SEE the protective shell of Flip's Dimension Sphere that supposedly protects him like a force field.  But the author still doesn't explain how it works.  As Flip lands on Mercury, he is attacked by gigantic Insect-Men.  Their leader breaks Flip's protective beam, causing him to fall to the ground (but he is still shown to be encircled by his beam.  Actually, as we can even see everything, they are in some light, so being in that light, the ground must be quite hot.  Flip is saved by a woman half-breed between Earth Human and Mercurian insect, who is their Queen.  Yet, she is exactly Flip's size.  She tells Flip that he will be her consort (King).  Meanwhile, in the lab, Adele notices that Flip's protective beam is broken. Just at the start of Flip's wedding ceremony, Adele sends a super-strong electric charge through The Dimension-Beam.  The bolt breaks out through the gap in Flip's beam, and destroys everything around Flip, but he is protected by his
Dimension Sphere.  So Flip is saved and returns through the beam.  This is the first time Adele does something very important to help him.

(8} A Trip Into The Unknown (Flip & Adele Struggle Versus Mercury's Spider Men)
Flip has created a fluid that reduces any living thing to na very small size.  This is like Ibis' magic Wand.  He can do anything he wants to do at the drop of a hat!  I hate stories that have their heroes perform magic.  He shows Adele a tiny horse he shrunk. This is a sequel to the story of the dragon-like Heidites of Mercury, in which Flip and Adele travel back to Mercury to shrink The Heidites to help the Human-like Mercurians, but, something goes wrong, and they land on a different planet in a so-called "different Universe.  Why complicate things using a different universe?  Why not have it be just a different solar system?  Do we have a recent Brooklyn High School dropout who doesn't know what The Earth's Solar System is, or what our Universe is?  They come across large cannibal plants and get grabbed by one.  Flip grabs his bottle of shrinking fluid and shrinks it.  Then, they encounter giant Spider-Men, who wrap their web strands around The Heroes, trapping them in cocoons. But they shrink themselves to come free from their cocoons and climb out.  They find some roots that contain large amounts of iodine, which just happens to be the antidote to the shrinking fluid. They grow well past their natural size, scaring The Spider-Men away.  But then they are attacked by Monster bats, and the episode ends with a lot of suspense (for the first time in the series).

(9) Flip Travels Back in Time to Save The Amazons from Invaders
In this episode, Flip's assistant and ladyfriend is now named Peg, and looks to be a different character, with
golden, rather than yellow (blonde) hair.  Flip travels back in time to The Amazon Rainforest, during The 16th Century to find The Amazons (Female warrior tribe) described by Spanish explorer, Francisco de Orellana.  Apparently the author didn't know that it was The Greeks who first wrote about the legendary, warlike, female Amazon tribe they encountered in Eastern Anatolia and Transcaucasia, during the 5th and 4th Centuries BCE, who were a nomadic Steppe Grasslands tribe.  Whereas, Historians thought the same in 1940 as we do now, that Orellana only called them Amazons because their warriors (who were msale) had unusually long hair.  Archaeologists and historians, after finding many graves with female warriors found buried with weapons of war and horses, along with male warriors, believe the real Amazons that spurred the Greek legends were Scythian sub-tribes who were so hard pressed by other hostile steppe nomadic tribes that they needed every warrior they could get, and so trained theirt women in combat, to help protrect their children and camps when their male warriors were away.  There is a legend that a band of Scythians had all their warrior men wiped out in a battle, and their women trained to fight using what weapons were left, and were able to defend themselves and their children against other tribes.

In this episode, Flip helps The Amazons against Spanish attackers, and The female warriors reciprocate by rescuing Flip when he is captured by The Spaniards,  Knowing the future, Flip warns The Amazons to relocate to much deeper into the forest, to avoid being seen by the foreign invaders, who will continue coming in ever larger numbers. 

I find it interesting that The Amazons were shown as "Caucasians", and not native South Americans, with darker skin and perfectly straight, jet-black hair and rounded heads of the actual Amazonian
tribes.  The author depicted people looking more like the ancient Scythians.  So why didn't he have Flip visiting eastern Anatolia (Turkey) or Transcaucasia, southern Ukraine or Turkmenistan or Khazakstan?

(10) Flip Travels back to The  in The 18th Century, to Find Hidden Pirate Gold
This story is a bit different in that it uses a good deed for WWII war orphans already in need in real life BEFORE USA joined as a military participant.  A head of a welfare organisation approaches Flip, asking him to find centuries lost pirate treasure to use for that purpose. Flip travels back to 18th Century Florida, and gets captured by pirates burying a treasure chest.  To get away from danger, he leaves there through the power ogf his machine.  We don't see him activate the power (no remote control device).  So we have more unexplained magic here.  His disappearing makes the remaining pirates think he was The Devil, so they jump off a cliff into the sea (perhaps to drown).

(11) Flip Travels Back Millions of Years, To The "Caveman Days"
Of course, a 1940 Science Fantasy (with the emphasis on Fantasy) is going to have Humans living in the time of Dinosaurs.  Flip travels back 1 million years for a univenrsity professor, to find out what life for Humkans was like then.  Only being off by about 64-65 million years.  Not bad science, eh?  A Brontosaurus only 1million years ago.  That's a lot more than 66 million years off.  It's over 100 million years off.   

[Morgus]

Robb, thanks for this. By the last page, the lettering has changed his name to “Fud” and that cracked me up. The rest of the time it read as Fup to me, almost as good. Your points about how the fourth dimension could have worked are well taken. If somebody had sat down and actually put some SKILL into the stories, you’ come up with a premise VERY similar to Dr Who
‘Crash, I’m with you...I’d love to know the stories behind how this was all made, and who did what. Did they take any longer than a coffee break to come up with the next story? The art looks like it could have been drawn with a grease pencil on the hamburger wrappers they had for lunch.
I wish I had a taco for every meme on facebook I’ve seen that has been based off that bottom right panel of page 40 when Insect Queen announces her intentions.
But, I also read the whole thing. Kept my attention because just about every rule you can think of in comics was cheerfully stomped. No quality control, continuity, logic, narrative, or anything else.  Nothing was going to get in the way of THIS deadline!
I hope people stuck below decks making this for ‘The King of Comics’ had some fun with it. I’d like to think they did. Fud Falcon. Still makes me snicker

[Video_Prince]

Everything about this looks just like a Fletcher Hanks comic.

[gregjh]

Well Crashryan I'm grateful for you because otherwise I'd be the only one here that liked it! Then again I like professional wrestling and Burger King, too. It's clear from panel 1 that this is just a complete load of nonsense but it's so ridiculous and shameless I just couldn't help but enjoy it. Was DMT a thing in those days? If so, perhaps the creators were enjoying some as they came up with these incoherent stories.

[SuperScrounge]

Flip Falcon Compilation

1st story
A ball thrown into a machine comes out turned inside out so Flick throws himself into the machine??? There's a word for that... Insanity.


2nd story
So the women of the three-arm race have 2 arms? Interesting.


The Power of the Slave-Giant's Goddess...
Adele's apparently reluctant agreeing to pose as a goddess whose word will be obeyed by the giants was kind of amusing. I know a number of women who would jump at the chance Adele gets. 


4th story
Are atom disruptors anything like atomic bombs?  I guess not considering the lack of radiation and Flip & Adele surviving the blast.

So a million years in the future humans will be walking skeletons?


The Doomed World
Those oxygen suits they wear must be invisible. 

Sooooo... even on Mercury women talk too much?  Ah, casual sexism where have you gone? 

Ah, yes, once upon a time it was believed that only one side of Mercury faced the sun. Science marches on.

Given that Mercury is smaller than Mars Flip and Adele should be even stronger there.


6th story
Oh, just fighting Lucifer. Pfft! Puny mythological entity thinking it can defeat science? Oh my... *rolls eyes*


7th story
Back to Mercury, but Adele acts like they've never been there before.

Lucifer can't break the beam, but an insectman can???


A Trip Into The Unknown
Hasn't that been most stories?

Did the author for this story later write for the Spicy pulps?


8th story
So Adele is now Peg? Did the editors think that Adele could be an obscene word?


9th story
Not much point to saving those pirates who got killed anyway.


10th story
Ah, dinosaurs and cavemen... a million years ago in what would be America. Science? What's that?


Wow... at first they seemed to have a continuity, then the creators seemed to stop caring and do a series of slight, unimportant little stories probably just to fill space in the book. There were some fun ideas, as well as fun mistakes, but dispensing with continuity just robbed the series of being anything other than an interesting curiosity.

[The Australian Panther]

I've been preoccupied over the fortnight with personal health issues, so have not yet commented.
Haven't looked at the book yet, but the comments so far haven't left me enthusiastic about doing so. 
But here goes!
Flip Falcon in The 4th Dimension Collection 1
https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=61175
Since this is a collection, no publication date is given.
I would assume it would be a very early publication and I was right.
GCD gives 23 issues of 'Fantastic Comics' published between 1939 and 1941
There is apparently one issue they haven't got a copy of.
Curiously,
Image published one issue in 2008, continuing the numbering!
Seems to have been a labor of love.
Here is a list of the contributors.
https://www.comics.org/series/29509/details/creator_names/

But enough! I have delayed too long - onward.

First - the 4th Dimension is Time!
Second - Just looking at the first story - Salvadore Dali would have loved this.
I once wrote a paper on Surrealism. This stuff fits right in there.
'The sight of a beautiful girl might cause an emotional short.' True.
Some great dialogue in this work - worthy of Monty Python.
'Is that why you are so unlike these things?'
'Hold your tongue! I too am partly thing!"

Actually, when I stopped assuming anything had to make any sense at all, I quite enjoyed it
Got a few laughs out of it.
I don't know who the creator was, but I get the impression, he just let loose and enjoyed himself.
Thanks Robb!

QQ is here tomorrow.     


         

[Morgus]

Gregjh, DMT was discovered by a Canadian, actually, back in ’31, I think. Nobody knew what it could do until the early 50”s. It was legal until ’68 so I don’t think it was a thing until those wacky kids in the Fabulous 60’s started to play with it.  People still like to try research with it, but it’s seen as a game of diminishing returns, because it’s such a wild card. The stuff is super hard to predict how it will act on any given subject.

If I had to bet, I’d guess the writers just drank a lot of Jim Beam or Old Crow.