It was this or the Mike Mannigan swimsuit cover. You’re welcome, ladies.
The Blue Beetle #38
Fox Feature Syndicate (Summer, 1945)
This won’t matter to the archival readers, but for the folks who show up, this was going to go up yesterday, but to get it out on time for Friday the comic review has to be done on Thursday. I was busy Thursday and just about got the feature article done. “Yesterday’s” Comic will resume next year, which is in a few weeks, because I’m taking Christmas week off. Next week will be the daily posts and my Chapter By Chapter review of A Christmas Carol as I try to finish Captain Yuletide, so this is the last comic review for 2023 AD.
Let’s see if it disappoints or if they got their act together. Read along with me here.
The Adventure Beneath The Sea
This time Dan is endangering, I mean bringing Patsy Ruth Cook and Harry Duncan on a random adventure. I’m actually wondering what became of Sparky/Spunky now. I don’t miss him; I just wonder if he’s still alive or a Nazi prisoner somewhere. And yes, they’re still listing the kids FULL ADDRESS! 1945 is another universe sometimes. Apparently Joan follows the mailman to find where Blue Beetle gets his mail, the mailman being the only one who knows the address…until now. I thought Blue Beetle just took Joan with him? Harry has a friend that may or may not actually have existed in real life who is sick in the hospital (would have sucked for that kid to see himself in a Blue Beetle comic but sick in the hospital the whole story), so the adventure is finding a magic herb that can cure whatever it is he’s suffering from. Hope Patsy was the type to risk her life for a complete stranger but she did write into a superhero comic. It’s so lucky they find a message in a bottle that leads them to the herb. I’m just at that part and I can tell they didn’t even try with this story. So Beetle goes through a bunch of challenges in an undersea city…and Patsy loses the herb anyway! Wait to make the girl who wrote in to be in this story a clutz! But it’s okay because the hero’s visit helped Johnny fight off whatever it was. Why was this story made? Who was greenlighting these things?
The Threat Of Saturn chapter 4: “Revolt Of The Zombies”
Darn, I was hoping they had forgotten this story. I wish I could. Is there a page missing? Because I’m not sure how Blue Beetle started out outside the building where Saturnia and Gloat have their penthouse apartment, and if that made sense you haven’t been following this story. The henchman that led him into their elevator trap decides he doesn’t like being bait and dying with the Blue Beetle and gets killed trying to help the hero. So the Saturn villains steal his body and bring it back to life with a command to attack the Blue Beetle. Then they turn zombies into statues and sell the statues, but the former baddie manages to warn the Beetle and he easily convinces everyone to throw them out. After challenging Gloat he wins, becomes the master of the zombies, and orders them to turn to dust. Beetle brings the aliens in but then they’re stopped by Mike so he can arrest all three of them, which somehow is our cliffhanger. That means suffering MORE of this serial. I’m going to need these next two weeks.
Joan Mason: Reporter> “The Blue Madonna”
Joan is supposed to cover a museum exhibit and ends up working with a cop named Dennis (who is working with Mike for some reason because Dan’s not here) to uncover a painting theft. I’d summarize but the story is kind of a mess, going from moment to moment with only barely a link between them. It’s one of those “and then this happened, and then this happened” stories.
Mystery Of The Tolling Bell (or is it “The Bell Which Refused To Stop Ringing”?)
Ignoring the O’Brine Twins again and going to our final Blue Beetle adventure. Miss Matilda writes Blue Beetle through the paper (why not use the same address as the kids?) to complain about a bell that won’t stop ringing in her town…because that’s a mystery for a superhero. Of course, once you read the story you will wonder why Matilda did that. I won’t spoil the ending here, but I will spoil that it’s not a good ending.
Overall
Not a good issue. None of the Blue Beetle or Joan Mason stories are any good. I feel sorry for those poor kids being in lame adventures, though I wouldn’t mind seeing an interview with the people who got to be in these comics as kids to see what they thought. Hopefully it gets better, and I just found out you can bring up a date and list all of the comics that came out in that month and year at Comic Book +. Won’t help with this run of Blue Beetle reviews but it will be helpful for whatever happens to “Yesterday’s” Comic once I’m out of physical comics and my ComiXology and Drive Thru Comics libraries. See you after Christmas and New Years…unless you come for other stuff I discuss besides old comics.
BW Media Spotlight 