[MarkWarner]

For the third week of our really fun reading group (well I am certainly enjoying it!) we step even further back in time with  Amazing Mystery Funnies v02 07 https://comicbookplus.com/?dlid=16514. Date July 1939

The main story that we are concentrating on is the first one, "Fantom of the Fair". How cool is that?

The book looks a real goldmine for comments and debate so should be a lively week!

[narfstar]

Fun story. Were the Fantom's powers ever explained. Not always the most perfect pictures but nice flow and action. Easy enough to understand the Fantom guarding the fair but being right there for the scaffold fall is pushing coincidence.  Love how the cop quickly changes his opinion of the Fantom without any real reason.

[paw broon]

This is great. Before going back for a third read, well it is a superhero story, just a few thoughts. The splash page wastes no time in getting the reader into the adventure and it is genuinely exciting.  While still a bit rough round the edges - compared to later P.G. art - there is a more than a touch of sleekness and motion in the early panels.  And the costume is suitably mysterious.  Now this could be my opinion based on a lifelong love of costumed heroes but I imagine that in 1939, a lad with his few coins clasped in a sweaty paw must have been attracted by the cover, and sold if he had a swatch at that 1st. story page.
I often glance at the back page of a comic before reading the whole thing and this issue's back page is worth a look with some great adverts.

[narfstar]

Good points Paw. The cover was eye catching and it did get right to a story. I agree that the art was a good start to PG's career an improved over time.

[Drusilla lives!]

I found "Phantom Of The Fair" a rather enjoyable straight-forward read, and I agree with Paw with regards to the action in the early panels.  Considering that this is amongst the earliest of superhero stories, it's understandable that the artwork would be rough and primitive in places (as it is in the early Superman stories I might add) as these early creative efforts on the part of single individual writer-artists were still working out the visual language of the genre... the dynamic use of panel layouts in particular.  Although as Paw mentions, the primitive half splash title page is still rather effective.

Also enjoyed "The C-20 Mystery" by Everett, a quick read and very nicely done imo (this guy is gonna go far )... and the Grizzly Dunn short.   

[bowers]

I'd already read this issue about a year ago, and even after a reread, I must say Fantom is just not one of my favorites. Gustafson's visual storytelling was far, far better than his writing. It was the best part of the story, well-paced and cleverly presented. I will also give him credit for creating one of the first super-heroes and, I think, the first with an underground lair- innovative! Even his own torture chamber! Obviously based on The Phantom of the Opera, the big weakness for me was an almost total lack of Fantom's back-story. Vaguely hinted at in this issue, it was still vague in later stories. I mean how and why did this guy become a vigilante? We knew Batman and Superman's motivations, and could relate to them.Since the character only lasted about a year or so, we never really got a chance to know him. Enjoyed Burgos' graphic line work on the Air-sub DX story- kind of reminded me of Calkin's Buck Rogers in places. Also liked Everett's C-20 Mystery. The Jack Strand story was a bit strange and got even stranger in the next issue, but I liked it too. All-in-all, this book was a good choice. Although I was a bit disappointed in the lead-off feature, the book was a pretty fun read. Cheers, Bowers     

[misappear]

I have mixed feelings about stories like this.  I realize that they are early attempts at narrative art, but I often don't feel particularly forgiving at the obvious lack of good story-telling or clunky efforts at panel to panel flow. 

I try to imagine myself an 8 year old kid with a couple of dimes.  How impressed would I have been with the attempt here?  I think I would have liked the art.  It was a little more defined than a lot of the very rudimentary attempts published at the same time.  Some plot elements would have bothered me.  Is this guy truly human?  How does a human pass through solid walls and floors?  Where does this strength come from?  Normal humans don't live 1000 years.  Iceland? 

Maybe it's my sense of organization.  For example, when a character comes "from a race of supermen" you expect extra normal ability right from the get go.  Or is a character is operating from some sense of vengeance or an attempt to re-balance the scales of justice?  As a kid with a couple of dimes I would have passed on this character in favor of a more fleshed-out character with clearer motivations. 

Am I being overly critical of an artform in its early stages?  Perhaps.  My perspective here is a little peculiar, as I'm looking at this effort in relation not only to other comic books of its time, but also of other comic strips, which puts a lot of "pressure" on many golden age comics characters. 

I look at all the scores of stories and publications that built the path from Ally Sloper to Maus.  Was this step pivotal?  I don't think so.  Harsh criteria?  Perhaps.  Pivotal for Gustavson, maybe.   

Which brings the idea of how important is this single comic story, or this single comic, or this series in the grand scheme of comic evolution.  I believe that Americans could have gotten to graphic novels of the caliber of Maus by the early 1960's if it wasn't for the Comics Code.  British comics were clearly on that path, and the French could be argued as having achieved that sophistication pretty early on their own.  So yes, every story may matter ultimately. 

I fear I may be treading on sacred ground here, and I don't want to diminish the abundant joy many feel in reading these early tales, so I'll stop here before I piss off the whole group and admit that I'm way too critical at times. 

--Dave

[Drusilla lives!]

With these old GA stories I'm not as critical as some with regards to initial character development (the lack of which I hadn't noticed really).  With reading this one piece I was assuming that Gustafson (who's work I'm not familiar with btw) must start somewhere with introducing the Phantom, and this not necessarily must be done with a formal origins tale imo. 

That could be "rolled out" over several stories little by little (in keeping with a "serialized" comic strip approach that seems to permeate much of the writing/plotting style of the day), which is what I assumed he would eventually do... which I'm surprised to hear that he didn't. 

Yet another indication perhaps of the haphazard, "fly by the seat of ones pants" nature of the genre (and business) in these early stages.  Or perhaps, a "formal" origin tale is another example of the superhero narrative language that was still being hashed out at the time, but which seems so logical to have to us modern readers.

[paw broon]

There was something niggling away at the back of my mind as the story ran past my eyes.  I 'd seen this character somewhere else and it was Secret Origins #7 from DC but here the name is spelled Phantom of the Fair. 
The lack of an origin here doesn't bother me, rather it increases the sense of mystery and as for the art, well, compared to most of the rest in this comic, it's much more appealing and, to me, very representative of early superhero art.
It's very difficult to put out of mind all the comics we've read, most of which will be more "modern" than this example. As an example, music has changed and evolved so much since I first heard The Kinks, "You Really Got Me" the week it came out and it sounded like nothing else I had ever heard - different noise,excitement, started and didn't stop till it got to the end, short, sharp and changed how people heard music.  I still appreciate it and experienced that odd frisson again tonight when it was on Radio Scotland.  So with comics and despite all the bells and whistles of modern comics, developments in layouts and storytelling over the years, I can still tone down the influence of what I have read and, in this case, appreciate the story and decide that to me The Fantom was an exciting, colourful and mysterious character, making the comic worth the price - if I had been that wee boy with the coins grasped in sweaty fingers.
Air-Sub DX was silly enough to be enjoyable and, don't you think the Sub has a sort of superhero flying shape?

[twiztor]

re: Fantom of the Fair:
found the character to be very mysterious and it makes me want to read more. i'm puzzled over his line about being an "ordinary man" who apparently has super strength (punched through a desk! tied a gun in a knot!), hypnotic powers, and a 1000 year old myth about him (that only 1 guy knows of).
the torture chamber was excellent. the costume was equally excellent.
laughed at the call out of the "special fair police" and how the cop shot first and dismissed the victim's pleas. nice detective work there.

2039 AD- this was terrible. a poor attempt at a Public Service Announcement.
Air-Sub DX- an OK story, but i question why a guy named Tim wears a cape. Also, i thought the motors were broken and would take hours to fix, which lasts all of a single panel.
C20- really liked the red/black atmosphere for this one, even if i question how timely this wraps itself up (especially all off-panel)
Jack Strand- what an odd little story. i loved it and can't wait to read more!

[bowers]

Absolutely correct, Paw. DC did include The Phantom of the Fair  in Secret Origins 7. Supposedly, Fantom was also an inspiration for the Malibu character, Gravestone. Haven't read one, but I'll look for it. Cheers, Bowers

[crashryan]

For some reason the comment I uploaded disappeared before it reached the forum. I'll try again. If the original should reappear you can measure how close I come to repeating myself.

I enjoy these early comics because you can see the creators trying to work out how comic books should be made. They try out all kinds of subject matter--I mean come, on, a lederhosen romance story? Every feature has different lettering, different balloon styles, different coloring approaches. The artists wear their influences on their sleeves--note how Jack Strand morphs from Flash Gordon to Secret Agent X-9 to Standard Frank Frollo Man and back again. Carl Burgos' story (and only his) has a banner atop each page. The stories are often confusing, with characters dropping out of nowhere. I still don't understand the payoff of the Grizzly Dunn story. Explanations are welcome. I get the impression the scripts were written off the top of the author's head without planning.

Amidst all the hullabaloo, Bill Everett's "C-20 Mystery" shines like a beacon. It offers some very sophisticated artwork, like the flashlit panel at the top of page 3. The story is kind of a mess--a judge lets a woman get away with murder--but even so the strip is far and away the best thing in the book.

As for the Fantom of the Fair, I liked it despite its shortcomings. Paul Gustavson's art isn't that bad, though in the future he did much better. Like many early superheroes the Fantom sprouts new powers as needed. The writer obviously hasn't thought the character through. The New York World's Fair of 1939 captured the country's imagination, and the excitement shows in this tale. However Gustavson didn't bother with reference photos and his Fair is a giant Streamline-Deco city.

A fascinating bit of trivia is found in "Uncle Joe's" editorial. He describes fanzines sent him by readers. One is "Scienti-Tales," which was given him by "one of my artists." The zine's co-editor is John Giunta, who a few years later would himself become a noted comic book artist.

[paw broon]

Actually the point about subject matter is interesting and reflects on something raised by Richard when we were discussing Rulah and how a British perspective/pov can differ from those of a N. American. The British (and French, Italian and others) experience is a large part of anthology story papers and comics with a range of different subjects in each - detective, school, s.f., thriller, adventure, sport, but not romance.  So it didn't seem strange to me to read a comic with all those differing types of story.
Crash's point about Jack Strand morphing, albeit in a not very well drawn way, from Flash Gordon to Secret Agent X-9 to Standard Frank Frollo Man and back again is well noted.
The point I was trying to make in my last comment was confusingly made, I think, but I do feel that as comics fans, we can't unknow what has happened from these early American comics till now and with this example we are reading an example of a comics format in the making, without which we might not have developed in the same way some of the masterpieces that were to follow.  So we have to try to see it as it was then, among piles of other, relatively basic comics and fighting also with garish pulp covers for the coins of folk who probably didn't have that much.

[narfstar]

I thought I would mention the use of color or not. Of course this was done to save money. The fewer pages colored the cheaper labor and printing. They had to decide how many black and white pages they could get away with. I wonder how they decided which pages to color. Why did they color Grizzly Dunn? Why was it colored in weird pastels? The colorist and letterer are often overlooked in pre-modern comics. Colorists often shine (sometimes literally) in today's comics but not so much back in the day. It has been said that a good movie score should go unnoticed and somewhat the same for the colorist and letterer. I never realized their value until I did not buy Charlton war or western comics because the lettering by A MACHINE was such a turn off. It was just a few years ago that I saw a horribly colored Charlton western and realized how important the colorist had always been. It makes sense that the superhero story is fully colored but notice the lack of background colors in the other color stories.

C-20 was exceptional Everett was already shining. I think it actually looks better than some of his later GA Subby work. I think that Carl B did some of his best work on Sub DX. I think it looks better than much of his later work. It may well be the lack of color that highlights his talent more. Looking back through Fantom without reading it and I appreciate the art even more. Pretty nice stuff.

Inner Circle looks like, other than a few panels, it could easily be cut and pasted into a newspaper strip from which comics came. Many artists took awhile to break away from that mold. 2039 was crazy fun.

Well all this caused me to look through surrounding issues. Darn it makes me wish for the time to just collect all the different strips and read the story arcs. Some very unique and interesting stuff. I noticed that Borgos' color Sub DX still looked pretty good but I think better in black and white.

[Drusilla lives!]

...the payoff of the Grizzly Dunn story. Explanations are welcome.

I think the joke was just that the horse bucked at hearing the gunshot near the end of the race... unlike the other one, it turned out to be a gun-shy "easterner," at least that's how I read it. 

I liked the rather simple, but imo nicely done art work... particularly the galloping horses.  I thought the artist captured their motion rather well.

 

[MarkWarner]

I wrote a lot so here we go  ...

The inside front cover editorial is rather strange. Uncle Joe seems to be very interested in amateur publications and fanzines. I guess it is just not to fill up copy, but maybe an attempt to build a "reader community", or is it talent spotting?

On to the Fantom of the Fair Story. Not that I am complaining at all, but there seemed to be a lot of narrative in this, explaining exactly what is going on including a lot in the speech, Some of the art work I found rather interesting in particular the bottom left panel on page 6, with the crowd gasping and also the policeman on the top right of page 10. All in all an interesting read, and I think one I will revisit when I have learnt a bit more about this comic book business,

The Inner Circle briefly mentions Croydon Airport. I spent a few years trapped in Croydon, and have seen the area where it once was. I believe it to have once been London's main airport, from what I recollect there is a big hotel in one of the buildings left.

Anyway this is where the literacy rot really set in "Major Ramsay U.S.A. has recieved"  - remember the rule:  'I' before 'E' unless after 'C'. Just a few more noticeable ones dotted throughout the rest of the book. All ways -  Allmost - week's' -  you look so beatiful -  Not a loose panal - When your hair all disappeares.

The 'thot' for thought, I guess is some shorthand or slang that has passed me by?? Anyway I was really surprised by the obvious lack of care by all concerned. As for the story, I won't be rushing back to these international crime fighters. Neither the art, nor the story-line grabbed my attention. 

The same cannot be said for 2039 A.D. It was great!! I hope there are loads more to read. I really enjoyed the silliness of  the story and the art. My favorite bit of the book. The only complaint being it was just one page

Is Gray in Air-Sub DX based on Elton John? I guess not, as the comic was published in 1939 .. mind you he has been around a  long time! The decorative banner at the top of each page is rather interesting. I am no scientist, but I am pretty sure barometers are not very useful in space, as there is no air pressure apart from in your craft. But if it's a "space barometer" I stand corrected and it did somehow correctly predict a cosmic storm.
   
The Haunted House text story was fun. Light and jolly with a nice twist.

Unfortunately the obvious care that went into creating the C-20 Mystery didn't extend into the story that really ended badly.  I did like the art though. The middle right panel on page 31 in particular is rather cool!

I wasn't quite sure what the guy in Grizzly Dunn did wrong. In my eyes a hoss is a hoss.

The story about Psyk and the pin by Frank Frollo, the art was very peculiar and different. I am not sure if it is good or bad. The story certainly has potential and I thought was rather "modern" in flavor.

The Pardon, is an Alpine Romeo and Juliet story. but with a happy ending. It includes a MASSIVELY HUGE suspension of disbelief when the couple immediately find great-grandfather's 100 year old body.
 
That's all folks! Apart from to say I am going to save up my chore money to buy the printing press advertised on the back cover. But might take me a while, as it is $2.98. I think Uncle Joe would approve and I have 55 years to wait before I can make websites

[Drusilla lives!]

I didn't even notice the printing press after seeing the offer for fighting roosters... and that six round blank cartridge pistol looks a lot like a Saturday Night Special. 

[crashryan]

Which pages weren't colored was determined by the way magazines were (and are) printed. Comics were printed on sheets of paper (called signatures) big enough for 16 pages, 8 per side. Four signatures were collated and folded to comic book dimensions. Then one side (the spine) was stapled and the other three sides trimmed to cut off the folds. The result was a 64-page comic. To save money the publisher might print one side of a signature in black-and-white, or both sides. In the former case eight pages would end up b&w; in the latter sixteen. Because of the folding, the monochrome pages wouldn't appear all together in the finished book--there'd be some color pages, a clump of b&w pages, more color pages, another b&w clump, and finally more color pages.

I understand why early comics publishers would want to save money with one-color or two-color pages, but I wonder why they eventually decided to go all-color. Either they determined the savings weren't worth the trouble or they decided going all-color would bring in so many more readers that it was worth the extra expense.

[jimmm kelly]

I haven't read the comic, but I've looked through it at the colours and the layouts.

It has three signatures. Two signatures are in colour and one signature (the middle sixteen pages) is in B&W plus one--in this case the plus one colour is magenta. In printing the plus one colour can be any colour you choose (based on pantones).

What I find curious is that the first sixteen pages are coloured differently than the last sixteen pages--even though the first eight and the last eight pages would have been on the same signature--so the printing can't account for why the colouring is different.

In the Gustavson story, he chooses to fill in a lot of background details and those are coloured with strong hues. Lochlan Field, on the other hand chooses to leave out background details unless they are necessary to the story. I actually prefer that in comics--I think backgrounds don't need to be filled in unless the detail helps the story, but often backgrounds can distract from the foreground action. When Field leaves the backgrounds blank, the colourist chooses to use strong colours to fill the panel. Again, I like this (so long as it's done well), because the colour can be used to convey the emotion of the scene.

So on all of the first sixteen pages, we have strong colours.

Now on the last sixteen pages, the colourist chooses not to fill in backgrounds--and sometimes even foregrounds are left white.

On all of the final sixteen pages, we see this approach to colouring where the colours are largely used just to highlight certain features on the page, while the rest of the page is left untouched. Also while the first sixteen pages use a lot of primary colours, the final sixteen pages often use muted secondary colours.

I conclude from this that one colourist worked on the first sixteen pages, while another worked on the final sixteen pages. It's a striking contrast in colouring styles.

As for layout, the reason that comics were laid out in the style of dailies and Sundays was because they wanted to create the illusion that they were collections of dailes and Sundays--just like the popular comic books of the day that collected famous funnies.

In this book, we see different artists moving away from that approach. But i think their editors were the ones who insisted on using the grid format--it wasn't a matter of artists being uninventive. Gustavson is the artist in here who breaks away from the regular grid pattern the most.

But after all these years, the jury is still out on which approach to comics is better. There's a good argument to be made that the regular grid pattern is an aesthetically pleasing format for comics and that breaking up the layout really doesn't serve the story.

The eight panel grid was popular around this time because it resembled the paste-ups of dailies in the reprint comics--and we see Lochlan Field using it in this comic. But this grid pattern is a bit too cramped (although some modern artists have made it work for them) and the six panel grid pattern became increasingly more popular. And the three stories in the last sixteen pages all use the six panel grid pattern. Many modern comics still use the six panel grid.

[Drusilla lives!]

...I understand why early comics publishers would want to save money with one-color or two-color pages, but I wonder why they eventually decided to go all-color. Either they determined the savings weren't worth the trouble or they decided going all-color would bring in so many more readers that it was worth the extra expense.

Since this was probably more a business decision than an artistic one back then, either possibility is plausible.  But I'd tend to lean toward it not costing more to go all-color anymore.  I mean, could they really know going all-color would draw-in more readers?  Would publishers like Goodman (or even better, the likes of Fox) be willing to take that chance?  Superman wasn't a success just because the comic was in color.  Sounds more like an esthetic argument than a business one... and these guys seem to have been more worried about business than esthetics.

Perhaps it's just that the printing technology that was available to comic book publishers at the time changed, allowing for cheaper all four-color printing.  Chance upgrades at existing printers, using new ones with newer equipment, or just the increasing volume of titles with color in them made the four-color processing as cheap as going with just b&w.

[narfstar]

I really think it was much cheaper to not color it. The comics that were all in color forced the others to go all color. There are books that make a point of being in color.

[paw broon]

I agree. I'm certain cost was the main factor then.  I also think that kids who saw a full colour comic would be less keen on buying the next issue of a b&w, or partly coloured comic.

[Drusilla lives!]

I agree. I'm certain cost was the main factor then.  I also think that kids who saw a full colour comic would be less keen on buying the next issue of a b&w, or partly coloured comic.

I really think it was much cheaper to not color it. The comics that were all in color forced the others to go all color. There are books that make a point of being in color.

Now that I think about it, all color comics weren't all 52-pagers either... you might be right, four-color processing might still have remained expensive, particularly since comics were still a dime apiece.

Perhaps going all color was also one reason why comics shrink in page count... just speculating here of course.

[mr_goldenage]

So,........my late offering here is just that I would classify the Fantom of the Fair as a proto-type super hero. Reason being he was one of the first to show the category of "unexplained" abilities as his feats changed so much in the early appearances. Later not so much, but that is not the point here. As for the rest of the book, two tone was not the exception back then, but rather an experiment. DC or National back then had two tone books, as did other publishers. I think it was undermined at the time what the "final" format for comics at this stage of development would go. Remember Centaur folded rather early in the game. For the rest of the book mostly I agree with what was already said so no remarks needed from me. Sorry to be late life is really really wild right now for me. Later my friends....

RB @ Work