“This isn’t Pismo Beach!”
The Blue Beetle #31
Fox Feature Syndicate (June, 1944)
Home again, home again. Jigga jig jig. After settling their debts Fox Feature reacquired the Blue Beetle and presumably other characters but this is the series we’re focused on. As we’re about to enter this comic I’m curious if these are left over Holyoke stories just as Holyoke did when they took over the title or all brand new stories. We have THREE Blue Beetle stories this issue while we usually only got one or two from Holyoke, and they even gave Joan Mason her own story. There are also some new characters but none of the classic Fox heroes. Granted I won’t miss many of them that showed up in this comic. The less “Spark” Stevens I have to get through, the better.
The Blue Beetle: The Crumbling Skyscraper
Okay, you just lost me when the Blue Beetle takes his new Beetlemobile (no, that’s actually what they call it…this is why I put the read along link in the intro), grows to giant size and somehow repairs a building that got blown up like a box city because the invisible radio set in his ear picked up the Nazis trying to frame him for the explosion. Also he got the floors wrong. I know it’s been a while, but if you’re goal is to make the Holyoke writers look better, you won. Or if this is a Holyoke leftover it wasn’t left soon enough. It only gets worse from there as the Nazis keep trying to frame the Blue Beetle for sabotage and the FBI buys it, even starting to assign Dan to finding him…so I guess they restored the secret identity? Except to Joan’s dad, an admiral in the Navy now. He also has a war plane called the Beetlebird. Now we’re just really ripping Batman off and can’t at least some beetles fly? I could list everything wrong but I’ll stop at “that’s not how black light works, you idiot!” and just tell you to skip this nonsense. Oh, he does eventually get cleared and the spies are killed. There, don’t waste your time on this or the “Military Funnies” and “Minute Mystery” comics. As usual they aren’t funny and the Mystery ends too soon to be interesting unless you like plaster footprint molds. Let’s move on.
The Blue Beetle: Peril In The Pacific
Okay, if you’re for some reason reading the reviews first, this one is seriously propaganda. I’m thinking Fox couldn’t get the old writers back and the Grand Comics Database suggestions on who the creators might be back that up. (They don’t know for certain so I’m not listing them.) This time Dan and a colonel deliver a set of dispatches but Nazi spies in the FBI forces them to crash onto an island run by the Japanese, so Blue Beetle has to save them. Luckily the US army is about to invade the place. As a story it’s an improvement but this story does not age well, a problem for any form of propaganda really.
Joan Mason: The Whispering Death
Hey, the title’s in the actual comic on this one! And it’s actually not a bad mystery. Joan shows she can do things without the Blue Beetle and Mike Mannigan (not the Mike that shows up in this story) when she investigates a strange series of murders. It’s a bit compact but by now I’m used to that and the gist of the story still comes through. Even a clever way of committing the murders. Good job, writer of this story.
The Very Salty Tale Of The O’Brine Twins
Meet Waterman and Wetmore, proof that some parents are terrible at names. They’re also morons so 4F that the military wants nothing to do with them. So they go to work for a boat, foil a saboteur (who still gets the ship blown up) and somehow manage to capture the Nazi boat that blew there’s up. Keeping the boat after turning them over to the authorities they end up in Antarctica and find an Eskimo (thoughts of being derogatory aside, Eskimo refers to people living in the Arctic since the only native life in the Antarctic are animals) who gives them some new ice cream something or other. At this point I just lost interest and the threat of another story isn’t making me feel any better.
The Blue Beetle: Buried Alive
Spoilers: nobody is actually buried alive in this story. Dan escorts Joan to England to cover a meeting and they get involved with Japanese spies hiding out in a Chinese laundry. On the plus side they remembered Dan’s armor isn’t just some costume, though apparently now it also takes explosions as well as bullets. Also he can alter his size now and has a hologram device or something. Thrown in the worst artwork in the comic (not that any of it has been any good this issue) and the end result is just more war propaganda.
Overall…
This is was a huge letdown. Whatever issue I had with the first Fox run was nothing compared to Holyoke, but so far this second Fox run is not living up to either. The art is terrible, the Blue Beetle has his armor back and some cool vehicles but now he also has superpowers and gadgets that make less sense than his wireless phone in the 1940s. They need to get the old writers and artists back somehow, or find better ones that they have in this issue. Whether or not they do I guess we’ll see in the coming weeks.
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