“Yesterday’s” Comic> Judomaster #97

You’d think Rocky would learn after fighting a wrestler to avoid AMA fighting.

Judomaster #97

Charlton Comics Group (October, 1967)

“This One’s For Pop!”

WRITER/ARTIST: Frank McLaughlin

Sarge Steel: Case File 114 “Case Of The Widow’s Revenge”

WRITER: Steve Skeates

ARTIST: Dick Giordano

LETTERING: A Machine

[Read along with me here]

In our main story, Rip visits his alma mater and meets with his old boxing coach. Something is wrong though, which is proven to Rip when one of his coach’s new protégés takes an obvious dive. So Judomaster challenges one of his old rivals, now part of the gang betting against their guys. Judomaster wins, but the other crooks break out the guns so Tiger breaks out the feet, the heroes defeating them all.

What they got right: It’s an often used story for a reason. The hero deals with fixed matches and takes on the bad guys. I’ve never gotten into boxing but this part of the story is handled well.

What they got wrong: What they do speed up is the coach’s daughter dating the rival (not knowing he’s manipulating Pops–because of course he’s named Pops) then suddenly kissing the protégé because I guess he didn’t admit he liked her but she liked him. Thank to the back-up this is just seems to be a happy ending for the daughter, who gets over the rival rather fast. Also, this is still a World War II story as far as I know. We didn’t see a “war is over” story. This is Rip on leave…for over a week and walking around with a Japanese kid nobody takes notice of despite the internment camps still being a thing.

In Sarge Steel’s latest case, we get the rare done-in-one case ever since moving to this comic as a back-up. Someone tries to kill Sarge and ends up killing a newsstand owner that was a friend of his. Now he wants answers. Since I linked to the comic I won’t spoil the ending, but it’s a tale that keeps replacing answers with a new question, or the same old one as someone is clearly messing with Sarge. I rather enjoyed it.

What I think overall: This was a pretty good issue overall, despite some historical questions in the first one. It’s worth a read.