“Excuse me, miss, I’d like to return this tie.”
Blue Beetle #57
Fox Features Syndicate (July, 1948)
Only a few more issues left to go. Once again the cover focuses on the “True Crime” angle rather than the title character. I did a peek ahead and Blue Beetle takes center stage again next issue, along with some other oddities we’ll get to. As for now, let’s get today’s three main comic stories out of the way.
“The Black Widow”
For some reason the Comic Book Plus scan I linked to is missing the inside cover, where the story starts (again, with the whole page in blue, probably because of some printing deal). A woman and her father with a gripe against the Navy is using a plastic web of the Navy’s own design to kill sailors. Mike is assigned to the case but Joan, Dan, and later of course the Blue Beetle get dragged into it. Maybe there’s some left over stuff meds in my body from the liver biopsy Tuesday making me loopy but this story was actually good! I mean, the daughter’s motivation is lame because a sailor stood her up at the altar, and she turns out worse than her father, dishonorably discharged for murder. The story itself, though? Actually pretty good.
“The Lady Firebug”
People keep burning down their houses because they’re sick of looking at them, but it isn’t long before our heroes realize hypnotism is involved. It’s a plot to capture, brainwash, and frame the Blue Beetle. Points for not having Blue Beetle commit the crimes himself, since having someone else take his costume and planting him as a spy among the police (not knowing Dan is a cop–not that they’ll ever find out) is at least something different. Plus that’s usually solved by the hero’s innate goodness helping him break the spell. Sure, they went with a cop out (no pun intended) and that’s why this story isn’t as good as the first one, but it still beats some of the stories I’ve had to read lately from this comic.
The Fleagle Brothers: “Partners In Loot”
Our “true crime” finisher for the issue. This looks at the Fleagle brothers, how superstitions delayed a robbery that went wrong anyway, and how they were eventually caught. None of these true crime stories have been interesting. I don’t think there’s enough time, and of course it suffers for having to guess a lot of what they were doing between crimes. I won’t miss them.
overall
This was probably the best of the new Fox run, but that’s hardly saying much, is it? At least these stories were competent. They would also be the last of the Blue Beetle adventures (unless they continued in another anthology, like the old Mystery Men Comics) until 1950, and would continue the same numbering…for the last three issues. It’s kind of a shame if this turned out to be a start of repairing the damage to this series. We’ll see the hero’s return in the next review of this series.
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