“This isn’t the time to play catch, Aman!”
Amazing Man Comics #8
Comic Corporation Of America (December, 1939)
Yes, we’re up to December of 1939. It shouldn’t be long until we reach 1940 in this trip through the Golden Age. We’re still in the anthology years, so we have a lot of stories to go through. Let’s get on with it.
Aman The Amazing Man by Bill Everett
Interesting that the story starts by acknowledging the previous issue’s story, noting that Amazing Man stopped the dam destroyers and went off in a green mist. No bearing on this story. Instead, Aman learns about the start of World War II and decides to put his revenge on The Great Question to mess with the Nazis. He also messes with a woman in a cab to avoid playing his part of the fare, steals weapons and ammo for his plane, which gets shot down. It kind of serves him right that he has to get his green mist formula back so he can escape, but then he’s back to messing with Nazis on the battlefield. There is much story here. Someone decided to have the superpowered guy mess with the World War II bad guys before it was officially a second world war.
The Return Of The Cat Man by Tarpe Mills
Barton Stone sees a woman in her underwear (1939’s underwear, so some of you will be disappointed if you go to read this one) coming down his hotel and learns that a criminal who was there is now at a different hotel. The woman is a reporter and he offers to help get her story, by using his poisoned kitty cat to kill the villain. It looks like Stone has an ally who knows he’s the “Cat Man”. It was okay. Not great, but for what’s there it isn’t bad.
The King Of The South Seas by Howard Hughes: “chapter II”
Pirate raids on the seas. One ship’s mate tries to help but only manages to get himself and three passengers, including Sir Oliver King, away from the doomed boat. Three men on a yacht see them land and captured by natives part of the pirate operation and go after them. The others meet with the pirate’s king, and it’s Sir King’s son! A lot of events are thrown at the readers. Will this lead somewhere? We’ll have to wait for the next issue and chapter III, though frankly I don’t remember what chapter I was like and I’ll probably forget this one by the next one.
The Iron Skull by Carl Burgos
We learn a bit more history. In the next world war (not realizing they were already heading into one) in the far off year of 1950, the gangs take over and thus is our story. Someone’s in for a big surprise. Those days are over, but Magno, whose hands were replaced by magnetic ones after the war (okay) is out for revenge on the Skull and to rebuild the Chicago mob under his rule alone. Except it’s actually a series of tricks, and Skull has to stop him. The story makes good use of the time involved and you don’t see the betrayal coming. I enjoyed this one.
The Magician From Mars by Giunta & Mirando
After some dodgy science to explain Jane Q-X3’s “magic” we get our next adventure with magical Mary Sue. It’s just a series of small adventures as our magician deals with a crooked politician, a rodeo, an unexplained train attack, and a guy angry that his pen ran out of ink trying to sign in at the hotel. I could see Brie Larson playing Jane, and that’s not a compliment. I’ve seen better girl heroes from this period.
Minimidget The Super Midget by John E. Kolb
I’m not sure how you see two action figure sized people sitting on a fence from a moving car, but two agents of “The Power” decide to take Mini and Ritty prisoner because the story needs to happen. The villain shows our heroes all of his secrets and his plans to conquer the world, but someone helps them escape and get a message of help out to the authorities. Not really much happens in this story beyond that and it’s kind of boring. Lucky it’s short.
Chuck Hardy In The Land Beneath The Sea by Frank Thomas
Chuck and Jerry are sent by the king to a land where they can get fire. Apparently nobody told them how to make fire. Jerry gets upset when the Princess puts the moves on Chuck and insults her so she punches her a good one. This prompts the princess to bribe their guide to kill both surface people…thus dooming your kingdom. Good one, lady. It’s an okay chapter in this series, better than the other serial in this title.
Mighty Man: “The Football Mystery” suggested by Frank Filchock, by Martin Filchock
Apparently Martin let his relative suggest a story. The description on the page isn’t sure if that’s his brother or cousin, but he’s a fullback with the Washington Redskins, leading to a story of Mighty Man playing football…except I thought this was an Old West tale? Mighty goes undercover at a college where all the players are seven feet tall on behalf of the college they’re supposed to be playing next. How did they get so many tall guys? That what our hero wants to find out. Somehow this turns into a plan to rule the world. I hope Martin stuck to playing football rather than suggesting stories about it, because this one was kind of lame.
The Shark by Lew Glanz
The Shark learns about the mob trying to take over a small town’s fisheries by forcing them into the mob’s union so they can control the price of fish. Truly the most vicious of crimes, but then they kill someone and beat people up so the Shark has to intervene. Apparently the Shark can travel through water like The Flame can through fire, teleporting through a glass of water, and can turn invisible. It feels like they’re making up random powers now, though I could buy the water one because of The Flame and being Neptune’s kid. A mediocre story to end on.
overall
Only two really interesting stories in this one. The others are weak, break canon, or are just not interesting. Hopefully the next issue will be better.
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