Showing posts with label Novelty. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Novelty. Show all posts

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

SERGEANT SPOOK vs King Tut!

Sergeant Spook (which apparently was his real name before he died) has a very short and simple secret origin...and it contains a message: Smoking is bad for your health!

One night while working in the police crime laboratory, Sergeant Spook absent-mindedly laid his pipe next to a rack of chemicals. The chemicals exploded, killing the sergeant. Thus began his career as a ghostly crime fighter.

No real super powers (like, say, the Spectre), but although he was invisible to humans, he could still make physical contact with them. He also spent a lot of time hanging with his fellow ghosts in Ghost Town.

Sergeant Spook debuted in BLUE BOLT COMICS v1 #1 (June 1940) and held a regular spot through v7 #7 (Dec 1946). There were 27 more issues of BLUE BOLT COMICS, and Sergeant Spook made it into 17 of them (v7 #10-v10 #1, Mar 1947-Jul/Aug 1949). He also appeared in DICK COLE #1 (Dec/Jan 1948/49).

from
BLUE BOLT COMICS v1 #10 (March 1941)
story & art by Malcolm Kildale

Monday, February 2, 2009

BLUE BOLT and the Green Sorceress!!

Blue Bolt debuted in BLUE BOLT COMICS volume 1 #1 (June 1940), created by Joe Simon. In v1 #2, Simon was joined by Jack Kirby, in their first appearance together. They chronicled Blue Bolt's adventures through issue v1 #10.

There were 101 issues of BLUE BOLT COMICS, v1 #1-v10 #2 (June 1940-Sept 1949), and Blue Bolt appeared in all but 3 of them. Although with v3 #2 (July 1942), he lost his costume and his powers and became a uniformed soldier fighting in the war as Blue Bolt, the American.

from
BLUE BOLT COMICS v1 #10 (March 1941)
story by Joe Simon & Jack Kirby; art by Jack Kirby, Joe Simon, Al Avison & Al Gabriele












More info about Blue Bolt: Wikipedia | Toonopedia

Thursday, December 25, 2008

EDISON BELL's Sleigh Ride!

I was gonna do a Green Lama Christmas story today, but the Golden Age Comic Book Stories blog beat me to it a few days ago. You can go read it there if you want.

So here's some Edison Bell!

from
BLUE BOLT COMICS vol 3 #7 (December 1942)
by Ray Gill and Harold De Lay




Tuesday, September 9, 2008

TARGET and the TARGETEERS go to Hollywood!

Here's some interesting trivia from Toonopedia:
"...here's a case where the name was used first for a continuing comic book, and only later was a character to match it introduced. It shared this trait with Centaur Publications' STARS & STRIPES and Lev Gleason's THE SILVER STREAK.

"TARGET COMICS was the first one... It debuted with a cover date of February, 1940...

"It wasn't until the tenth issue (November, 1940) that The Target himself was introduced, and only in the 11th did The Targeteers come along."

from
TARGET COMICS vol 3 #3 (May 1942)
written by ?; art by Sid Greene



You can download TARGET COMICS Vol.3 #3
and lots of other awesome golden-age goodness
from Golden Age Comics Downloads!

Sunday, September 7, 2008

"A few days later he tries Dick..."

This is the bonus, DVD-like commentary for the Dick Cole story I ran yesterday. If you haven't, go read it first.

Don't expect deep psychological dissertations on the characters' psyches or probing insights into the machinations of what the writer was trying to say. I'm just having a fun go at an old story.

And this is a strange story. It almost feels like 3 completely different stories running through here. We have the dinosaur plot, Reggie's evil scheme, and Dick Cole: Fugitive. But they all come together in the end.

Hm, considering this story, I should probably rephrase that last line... But I'm not going to, heh.

On with it, then!

Page 2: I find it hard to believe that if they arrived at the last second that there would be "a place -- up front!" But this is fiction, lol.

Page 4: "Hey, I found a dinosaur, but I'm done with it, so I'll just give it away! Oh, and let's just sit him down here in the middle of the crowd!!"

Page 5: "Wow! This is going to be some ride!" Don't get me started. But it is fairly prophetic for the story that follows.

Page 7: So tell me that little, deformed Reggie is not gay. He admires "big strong boys," cops a feel of Dick's muscle. He's not subtle. The question marks over Dick's head show he realizes the boy ain't "right." Simba calls it: "Huh--what a queer duck!"

page 8: And it apparently runs in Reggie's family. His brother "Steve was gay, athletic and liked by all..." Now you can make a case that, for the times, "gay" was intended as "happy go-lucky." But he's playing on swing, yelling "whoopee!" I win.

Page 9: Reggie invents a drug that makes people feel strange, do things they wouldn't normally do and forget they did it. GHB anyone?

page 10: "A few days later he tries Dick...." I. have. no. words.

page 11: "Nice, Dick! Dick, you're wonderful!" Ack, I'm dying here!

page 12: Reggie wants Dick to obey him "like a lap-dog!" And when he gets him drugged up: "Now you and I are going out..." This is barely subtext.

page 14: Nice imagery when Dick is captured by the swarm of guards. The one yelling "Dirty spy!" almost appears to be talking with his mouth full.

page 16: How much does a dinosaur cost?

page 18: Maybe the writer meant for Dick's thought to be sarcastic. But this is my world, and here, Dick is obviously interested in exploring his strange new feelings...

page 23: Simba and Dick mock Reggie's homosexuality with sing-song-y voices. See, they knew. It didn't bother them. They just brushed off his advances. But they knew the entire time. Now that they realize he's a villain, and that he manipulated them all, they want to get their hands on him. Hm, that didn't sound quite right...

page 24: Simba's just dying to lay his hands on Reggie! He keeps saying it over and over. What doesn't Dick know, Simba?
"It made me squirm to see those wonder boys flexing their pretty muscles and showing off!" Yeah, he was squirming when he was squeezing Dick's muscle. He didn't have to do that. But he wanted to.

page 25: "...on that animal's back I'm a colossus!" Brag much, Reggie?

page 26: I wonder if they're talking about the dinosaur here:

Well, that was fun. I'll probably never do it again. Ha!!

For more meaningful (and funnier) thoughts about the story, check out: Lady, That's My Skull: Let its sweet perfume sizzle into your brain!

Saturday, September 6, 2008

DICK COLE: Dinos and Homos and Drugs, Oh my!

Now I've got a Dick Cole: Wonder Boy story for you!! It's fun.
I first came across this one on the Lady, That's my Skull blog. And purely by chance a few months later I found the entire story on the Golden Age Comics Downloads site. For whatever reason, I never got around to posting it on my other blog, so now you get some "new" content over here! Yay!
I left out three pages that weren't part of the story, they were just a break to talk about Farr academy, and the story was already long enough! So I left them out.
This is definitely a strange one. Come back tomorrow for my full bonus DVD-like commentary.
Now on with the show:
from
4 MOST vol 1 #1 (Winter 1942)
written by Bob Davis?; art by Bob Davis