“Yesterday’s” Comic> The Blue Beetle #13

“The good news is that it’s not mice in your walls.”

The Blue Beetle #13

Holyoke Publishing Company (August, 1942)

The version scanned into Comic Book Plus isn’t in the best of conditions, though not the worst I’ve seen, but hopefully we’ll still get through this one. Also interesting is that the Grand Comic Database doesn’t have titles for some of the early Blue Beetle stories in this issue so they won’t have titles. For some reason the Blue Beetle stories are actually scattered through the comic, but I’ll still list them in the review as the Blue Beetle stories and the guest comics for the sake of formatting convenience. I’m still trying to decide on a layout for these Golden Age reviews.

The Blue Beetle by Charles Nichols

• [STORY 1]: GCD lists the artist as Pierce Rice but the art style does look slightly different, making me wonder if this was another leftover Fox Features story or a Holyoke original. Our villain kills a man using a bullet made of ice, making it hard to track. Oddly I think one of the CSI shows used the same murder weapon, but this was a fight over freezing processes. Since we’re still in the pre-supervillain days he’s just a typical criminal wanting to get the only freezing process patent rather than an ice-themed supervillain. Also whomever is playing Charles Nichols for this story seems to think Dan transforms into the Blue Beetle given how easily he changes into his chainmail costume without being seen. That wouldn’t happen until the Charlton reimagining. These details bring down an already average story if not for the ice gun.
• [STORY 2]: Oh, dear. We’re into World War II era stories now. The enemy are the Japanese, referred to as “Japs”, are written with heavy Japanese accents, and I paused when one of the bad guys was about to implement…his words, mind you…the “famous Jap stab in the back”. I guess the round-up hadn’t happened yet since it’s a Japanese man running a store, claiming to only hire Americans, but here he is using a mechanical beetle THAT HANGS FROM A WINDOW IN HIS SHOP!!! like he wants to get caught to kill American soldiers visiting their families. Also Mike is bald and thus far both stories have given him a bad Irish accent (yes, he’s always had one), like they don’t know how to write an Irish accent. This story does not hold up thanks to the racism and me not deciding if the villain’s a fool for showing off his murder weapon, but otherwise it’s a pretty decent villain plot for a story.
• “The Death Mask”: Not that the New York accents are any better. Someone can NOT write accents and it’s painful to try to read. This also doesn’t have Charles Nichols’ name on it. We also have a title but it comes from GCD, not the comic itself. We also have what could be a prototype supervillain and it’s not our ice-happy killer. It’s the Death Mask, a dude in a green skull mask who can kill you by pointing a finger–and fire a poison dart gun hidden in his sleeve. It’s the first time a villain got away. Will we see him again?
• There’s also a text story but I haven’t been reviewing those in the Golden Age reviews because there’s already a lot of comics to review and it eats up enough time. This is a comic review after all, but you can read it in the linked post above.
• The Hooded Spectre Of Death: An actual title, but no actual creator credit. Are these all Holyoke original stories now? The art is certainly different. Mike has hair again but lost his mustache the whole issue. Also he’s only here to be made fun of and I’m already over that nonsense. At least in his other appearances this issue he was somewhat helpful. This story sees Joan rescue a boy from being run over because he overheard a bank robbery. The hooded man known as…the Hood wants to silence the boy and it turns out to be another evil uncle plot, but at least he isn’t after the boy’s inheritance. Am I the only one who had good uncles…or at least not evil uncles?

The Guest Stars

• V-Man in “Patriots Fight For The Right” by Jay Foster: This story shows up just before the last Blue Beetle story. Jerry Steele works for a bunch of “V-Agents”, whatever those are, but isn’t one himself…except that he’s the masked hero V-Man. Why is he there in his civilian identity? Beats me. He also have a love interest in Ginger Dare, the only girl on the team who thinks he’s a coward and from this story it looks like V-66 is his sidekick. Only the boys get a V-# apparently. X-23’s fiance lucked out. This time it’s Nazi spies broadcasting US secrets from somewhere in America, near the Sioux Forest if that helps anyone with a better sense of geography than myself. The agents are shown as competent enough, which is nice and too bad Mike doesn’t get that kind of love. It was a fairly good story.
• Spark Stevens by Joe Kubert: Could we bring back Black Fury instead? No? Sigh..fine. Kubert’s off his game with this art. This is clearly not a Fox Feature hold over and rather ugly. I guess this is early Kubert? This is also the second story in a row where criminals try to capture someone in the US Navy to make them help commit crimes. Were criminals that in with the Axis powers in the 1940s? This time it’s a bunch of fascist gangsters threatening Italian Americans trying to force a government radio operator to send coded messages. Can these villains not get their own radio man? Visit a library and learn to use a HAM radio or whatever they had back then. Geez. We swapped one running gag with another.

Overall these weren’t terrible stories but they didn’t really stand out either. I’m not sure how Holyoke hired their staff or who came over from the bankrupt Fox Features but they’re all clearly still trying to figure this out. Making comics wasn’t the original plan. They were Fox’s publishers who took on the comics to earn back what they were owed. Maybe they’ll get better as things go on…and hopefully leave Spark Stevens behind because I didn’t care about his adventures in Wonderworld Comics.