[mr_goldenage]

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_XKCf0PDbNB0/TT3UaszDp6I/AAAAAAAAALo/wn2grv-M-Ds/s1600/Batsowl.jpg

check that out on the 'net.

Indeed it was BatsOwl.........Years before Bob Kane put pen to paper and created Batman, there was another caped crusader "Batsowl!" appeared in Illustrated Chips in 1918. By day this British hero was meek Desmond Devance, 20th Earl of Batsowl, and by night he became a masked being who flew with huge bat wings that folded into a cape.

FYI

Richard Boucher AkA Mr_Goldenage

[narfstar]

That is really cool

[mr_goldenage]

thanks.....glad you liked it..... I hope to get back to this subject sometime this year. Having fun with comp's as I sort out my Non-English books ready for scanning.....more good stuff coming soon. Take care.

Richard

[paw broon]

I get the feeling we've been here before.  Batsowl is certainly a familiar name so perhaps one of us has mentioned the character previously.  I also mentioned a very early flying, costumed hero, Flying Justice, from
Boy's Friend in 1927.  And of course, we have 2 Black Whip stories on CB+, from 1933, if memory serves.  Black skintight costume, mask, big whip and a his sidekick is a big dog.

[mr_goldenage]

I think it was you Paw that brought up this in a request from someone (probably me)...and given that I was just responding to a question. Thanks....didn't know we had Black Whip stories here....thanks for that. Take care my friend.

Richard

Post Script: Paw check this out - http://www.philsp.com/homeville/

[mr_goldenage]

Fox Features Syndicate - Comics From Around the World: USA. So....78 "compilations"....WOW I must say. I figured maybe 30 plus but less than 40 comp.'s done (I only counted them because I was curious!). That's what it took to do a company like Fox. I could have made some comp.'s have a bigger page count but at the cost of smaller scans. Now the "Big 4" and characters who made it to their own books got smaller scans due to the fact of their larger page counts. So anyways.... it was a great exercise on how a company like Fox would take to do and how much work would be involved, for the next time I do another company say like Nedor/Standard might take. Which made me choose a different route on the next ones I do (Great Pub. and Ajax-Farrell) VS the ones I wanted to tackle next (Nedor, Ace and Centaur). But discussions of other comp.'s let's save for a separate post. Back to Fox.

I picked Fox for two reasons: One...they were an early company and two... they went out of business (for the first time) right before 1942 like Centaur. Not to mention they had a lot of cool super hero-heroines characters. Given that, I enjoyed the variety of characters and some of them had some cool concepts. Some favorites of mine were the Fox Features Presents series, Fox Force, the Black Fury and Chuck, the Black Lion and Cub, and the Lynx and Blackie (and by extension the Moth) were other comp.'s I liked a lot. The Eagle and Buddy, V-Man and US Jones were a lot of fun. Well most were fun to do, even the Blue Beetle (and Sparky/Spunky) and the Green Mask (and Domino) both versions of the Green Mask. Least favorites were Samson and David, and the Flame/Flame Girl. O...let us not forget Stardust the Super-Wizard, what a concept! Makes one wonder who would win in a contest between Stardust and the Spectre.

Now for those so inclined, you can create your own Fox Universe. Imagine a League of Heroes of Fox. Or some of team-ups between the various characters ala Worlds Finest. I even threw in a few Villainesses and a pair of space/sci-fi strips and two underwater types for variety. All in all I really liked the comp.'s and how they turned out and look forward to the next ones. Just my thoughts. Yours?

Richard Boucher AkA Mr_Goldenage

[fate man]

Fox Features Syndicate - Comics From Around the World: USA. So....78 "compilations"....WOW I must say. I figured maybe 30 plus but less than 40 comp.'s done (I only counted them because I was curious!). That's what it took to do a company like Fox. I could have made some comp.'s have a bigger page count but at the cost of smaller scans. Now the "Big 4" and characters who made it to their own books got smaller scans due to the fact of their larger page counts. So anyways.... it was a great exercise on how a company like Fox would take to do and how much work would be involved, for the next time I do another company say like Nedor/Standard might take. Which made me choose a different route on the next ones I do (Great Pub. and Ajax-Farrell) VS the ones I wanted to tackle next (Nedor, Ace and Centaur). But discussions of other comp.'s let's save for a separate post. Back to Fox.

I picked Fox for two reasons: One...they were an early company and two... they went out of business (for the first time) right before 1942 like Centaur. Not to mention they had a lot of cool super hero-heroines characters. Given that, I enjoyed the variety of characters and some of them had some cool concepts. Some favorites of mine were the Fox Features Presents series, Fox Force, the Black Fury and Chuck, the Black Lion and Cub, and the Lynx and Blackie (and by extension the Moth) were other comp.'s I liked a lot. The Eagle and Buddy, V-Man and US Jones were a lot of fun. Well most were fun to do, even the Blue Beetle (and Sparky/Spunky) and the Green Mask (and Domino) both versions of the Green Mask. Least favorites were Samson and David, and the Flame/Flame Girl. O...let us not forget Stardust the Super-Wizard, what a concept! Makes one wonder who would win in a contest between Stardust and the Spectre.

Now for those so inclined, you can create your own Fox Universe. Imagine a League of Heroes of Fox. Or some of team-ups between the various characters ala Worlds Finest. I even threw in a few Villainesses and a pair of space/sci-fi strips and two underwater types for variety. All in all I really liked the comp.'s and how they turned out and look forward to the next ones. Just my thoughts. Yours?

Richard Boucher AkA Mr_Goldenage

Sounds Great,how can I create my own fox universe?

[fate man]

I Want to know how I can create my own fox universe.
I Am sorry to repeat my self.

[mr_goldenage]

edward r. home-gall had two books in the Human Bat series. I am looking to buy these at an affordable price .....is there anyone who can help me out here? Your thoughts and comments are appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Richard Boucher AkA Mr_Goldenage

[mr_goldenage]

I have found one of the books but they won't ship to the USA. Only to the UK. I am more than willing to pay for shipping to the USA but I need a UK address to ship to. Is there anyone that can help me out here? Obviously I would pay for the book myself so I just need an address to have the book ship to. Thank you in advance good people.

Richard Boucher AkA Mr_Goldenage

[paw broon]

I might just be able to help with that
I'll send a pm with my details, although I think you already have them.
Bear in mind that while the book might get to me relatively quickly, international post to you could take a wee while.

[mr_goldenage]

Thanks Paw,
Paid 4 and on it's way to you soon I would imagine. Thank you my friend.

Richard

[positronic1]

mr_goldenage mentioned Kazanda The Wild Girl and the Lost Continent. This was apparently a New Zealand one-shot from 1942 (although each page has been formatted with its own title panel, so it may have been serialized earlier). In a reversal of the usual trend, according to GCD, parts of the 30-page original story were reprinted in Fiction House's RANGERS Comics #23-28. Perhaps this explains why Kazanda had the shortest run of any of Fiction House's jungle girls.

[positronic1]

The original 1942 New Zealand KAZANDA one-shot (which was followed in 1944 by a sequel, KAZANDA AGAIN) can be viewed in all its pristine black & white glory at http://soda.naa.gov.au/item/771775

[crashryan]

Thanks for this link, positronic1. Very interesting comic, differing from the usual jungle girl tales thanks to the telepathy angle. The appealing art offers another example of the powerful influence of Alex Raymond had upon the world's comic artists.

[positronic1]

It's fascinating that this comic created 'down under' would have somehow found its way to the attention of Fiction House's editor. Or perhaps Kazanda's creators knew of Fiction House's predilection for publishing jungle girl comics (FH comics may have even found their way to New Zealand), and specifically submitted Kazanda for the editor's consideration.

[SuperScrounge]

What I  find interesting is
1. The original Kazanda pages are drawn like a newspaper comic page with the title of the feature on each page, but apparently it was first published as a comic book.
2. The cutting up and moving around of panels for the Fiction House version. (There appears to be some new panels as well.)

I'm going through the Fiction House versions and updating the GCD's listings with comparisons to the originals.

[positronic1]

What I  find interesting is
1. The original Kazanda pages are drawn like a newspaper comic page with the title of the feature on each page, but apparently it was first published as a comic book.

I guess there's probably no way of knowing whether the individual pages of Kazanda had been serialized earlier in some periodical newspaper or magazine. Then again, it's just as likely that they may have been prepared by the creators -- New Zealand artist Ted Brodie-Mack, and his writing partner, Australian Archie E. Martin (who used the pseudonym 'Peter Amos') -- with that intent in mind, but they were unable to find any market for it and so published the 30 strips as a one-shot comic book. HOWEVER, it's important to note that 1944 sequel (which I have not seen), Kazanda Again -- if that one were also similarly formatted with each page having its own title box, that would tend to lend credence to the idea that the strips had appeared somewhere before being collected into a comic book. 30 individual strips (a full month's offering for daily papers) would be a reasonable number of pages to prepare in advance, with the intention of trying to sell the property as a daily strip. Since the sequel did not appear until two years later after the original Kazanada one-shot, if they were formatted like single-page strips that would tend to make me believe that they'd appeared in some publication earlier. If NOT formatted that way, it would tend to imply that the one-shot Kazanda had been successful enough to inspire the creators to put together a follow-up one-shot from scratch.

[paw broon]

I could be very wrong but I believe Kazanda is an Australian publication.  Having read the copyright applications etc. and the indicia, it's clear Iran's was published in Sydney.  Of course, there might well have been a NZ version before this one.

[positronic1]

Yeah, I had originally written Australian, but then got confused because the artist (Ted Brodie-Mack) is from New Zealand (while the writer, Archie E. Martin is indeed Australian) -- but I think you're correct that the publisher of KAZANDA was in fact an Australian firm.

[SuperScrounge]

Here's what Jerry Bails had on the artist Brodie Mack

[positronic1]

Here's what Jerry Bails had on the artist Brodie Mack

Interesting! I was not aware that Brodie-Mack is also attributed as having worked on TABU -- which was a long-running feature that appeared in nearly every issue of Fiction House's JUNGLE COMICS. Looking into this at GCD, all I was able to find was a single Tabu story attributed to Brodie-Mack, and that attribution came from a reprint in AC's MEN OF MYSTERY. Looking up the relevant reprint, I see it's linked back to its source as appearing originally in JUNGLE COMICS #134 (Feb 1951), yet the same credits don't appear on the GCD listing for JUNGLE 134. Looking at the issue here at CB+, it's credited on the original splash page as "by Mack"... but I can't really see a resemblance to the artwork from Kazanda there. I guess I'd have to go back and study the evolution of the TABU feature in Jungle Comics from the beginning to see if I could discern some point at which the artwork became more Kazanda-looking. Being that #134 is a much later JUNGLE issue, it may even be the case that that particular Tabu story had been reprinted from earlier in the run. Or it could just be a mistaken mis-identification with "Ted Brodie-Mack" being confused with an unknown artist who signed his work as simply "Mack".

The other thing noteworthy in Bails' brief summary is that Kazanda is attributed as "c(irca)1939" to both Australian comics, and to British comics. That certainly seems to allude to an earlier publication of Kazanda somewhere (perhaps even multiple 'somewheres'), prior to the 1942 N.S.W. Bookstall one-shot Australian comic book KAZANDA THE WILD GIRL AND THE LOST CONTINENT.

I'll have to look further into that "backup feature" Bails mentions in MARVEL COMICS from the years 1942-43. No, wait -- I just realized that Bails' listing of "Marvel Comics" refers only to the publisher of record, not to MARVEL MYSTERY COMICS from 1942-43... which unfortunately will probably make it nearly impossible to nail down exactly which "backup feature" (Marvel published a LOT of those in the years 1942 & 1943) Ted Brodie-Mack may have worked on there. Searching for "Ted Brodie" or "Ted Brodie-Mack" on GCD isn't returning much in the way of relevant results, beyond Kazanda and that one Tabu story.

[paw broon]

I'm on holiday right now, but when I get back home, I'll check the British guide.  Unfortunately, there are omissions and some errors so don't hold your breath for an answer.  The other possibility could be that, if the story did appear in th UK, it was serialized in one of the many anthology titles, and that could make it very difficult to trace.

[positronic1]

O...let us not forget Stardust the Super-Wizard, what a concept! Makes one wonder who would win in a contest between Stardust and the Spectre.

The answer should be obvious... Fantomah. She would scare the shorts off even The Spectre.

Having said that, if Marvel Comics had owned Stardust, he could have solved the Galactus problem long before the Big G ever got around to troubling the FF.

[paw broon]

Re. Kazanda.  No listing in the British guide, but that doesn't mean the strip didn't appear here in one of the weeklies.  That could also be the reason the title is at the top of each page as British weeklies often had 1 page episodes per week.  More likely though is that it was a newspaper strip also.
International Hero site lists the character but simply reports that it was created for the Australian market.  No further forward, I'm afraid.