“Yesterday’s” Comic> Best Comics #2

Best Comics #2

Better Publications, Inc (December, 1939)

Wish I could tell you what this is going in besides the obvious, but with a name as generic as “Best Comics”, you can imagine research is not easy and I don’t have the time to devote to the only issue in Comic Book Plus‘ library. There’s this from Comic Vine:

Published from November 1939 to February 1940 with 4 total issues numbered 1-4.

An early experiment in the size and shape of comic books, unlike the other comics, of which there were few at the time, this one took the size of 68 pages in the form of a panel comic from the news paper.

It was made up of mainly of humor strips, having only one adventure series The Red Mask, which featured the first black mystery man, who while shown as white on the covers was shown colored darker.

This comic also is the reason that DC’s World’s Best Comics had to be re-titled World’s Finest Comics with the second issue, even though they had not published a Best Comics in over a year when WBC came DC thought it better not to fight them for it.

And someday DC/National Comics would become sue happy and kill Fawcett Publishing. Interesting, I thought Lobo (no relation), the black cowboy, was comics’ first black hero but here’s one from the “mystery men” period of superheroes. I’m guessing somebody wanted to fool someone into reading it so whitewashed the character because this was 1939. As stated, Comic Book Plus only has the one issue and it’s mostly comedic comics, the stories I tend to ignore in Golden Age comic reviews because they aren’t very good. Still, I’m curious to see this experiment to see if the size is the only reason it didn’t make it past four issues.

[Read along with me here]

Adventures Of The Red Mask by Geo. West

Starting with the action title, I see. It’s also published like the Sunday comics, with the name on each page. That matches the layout. Obviously I’m not full up to what’s going on, being the second issue. Some white woman named Nina is looking for a man named Jason but she and her little brother Danny are rescued by the Red Mask, who in all but one page is indeed a black man. Lot of those in Africa, you know, and that’s where the story is set. Anyway, Red Mask’s people want to sacrifice the white woman to appease the gods because they killed a monster that guarded a treasure. I could debate the logic here but I’m not familiar with sacrifices in every culture. They escape and…Red Mask gives the CHILD a gun while he and Nina search for a way out of the cave they’re escaping through, only for the cave to start flooding. Meanwhile, some guy convinced Red Mask is holding Nina hostage (again, haven’t seen the first issue) breaks away from the rest of the people on their yacht to find her and somehow ends up in some forbidden cave, is found by a black woman who I guess is in charge of something, and he’s going to be killed. Yet he makes friends with an Indian-looking woman (you know, from India, which is pretty far from Africa) and convinces her to help him escape and join him.

Well, that’s a lot for six pages. I have…questions. Why is this dude (would they really care about finding a black man in the 1930s this much? guessing this isn’t Jason but it might still be) wearing a red mask? Why are the people from a yacht being held. Is this other guy, Robert Fear, Nina’s consort or is he going to hook up with the India woman before this is over? How is this a 1930s comic when there’s only one depicted black guy that would be considered hella racist looking today and the rest are only “racist” if you’re one of those types of “saviors”? I’m happy about that last part, and I’m kind of curious how this story started and ends, but I’m a bit lost here.

Next is a text story with an old Western hero, the Masked Rider. Not to be confused with the bug man from Japan. This is a comic review and there’s a lot of comics to go through, so we’re moving on.

Silly Willy by Roy B. Niles

Well, I guess we can at least go over the comedy strips, since while there isn’t a long going story (I linked to it so you can read this for yourselves if you want…it’s public domain and all legal to read) they are a collection of strips and we don’t have a lot to discuss here. This is overview stuff, though. We see Willie try to find steady work, woo his girl, go shopping, deal with animals, knock himself out to finish a dream (he lacks my imagination and slow rising), and none of it is particularly amusing to me. Might be my tastes, but I’m in for more of this.

Happy by…Kin?

I’m guessing “Happy” is the boy’s name. This is back when a woman could ask a random boy to watch her dog and not expect something would go wrong. So something goes wrong. It was an okay joke and took two pages. I won’t spoil it here. He comes back in a later collection this issue in a less funny story where a sheriff thinks the kid is fishing where he isn’t allowed, but he’s teaching his dog to swim. Another one later in the book because he’s scattered all over the place. We see him play detective, try to prove to a girl that he’s a knight, and try to get into a baseball game. I really don’t care about this one, and having it scattered everywhere was annoying to review, but worked as reading material.

Another text story by Captain Kerry McRoberts called “Chab’s Jungle Friends”. Still moving on, but points for fighting the slave trade in the 1930s. Slavery was over by then in the US, of course, but so far I’ve seen better treatment of black characters in this comic than in any others from the time period.

Adventures Of Nervy Nerts by Geo. Scott

What scares me is that spellcheck is okay with that name. Nervy misses the train and doesn’t check to see that his aunt made it off (and we aren’t shown that she is) so he chases the train, ends up riding outside a plane, and falls into the ocean to meet a mermaid happy to see a man. Oooookaayy.

Peggy Wow by Ray McCoin (I think…it’s hard to read)

Peggy appears to be a secretary at Twinkle Twinkle Motion Picture Studio. Not sure what her boyfriend (or maybe husband because she mentions a honeymoon), Davey, does, but if that’s supposed to be handsome he might be an actor. It’s one of those comics where the women are attractive and the men aren’t. Whatever he’s doing, his boss won’t let him leave between pictures, ruining the couple’s vacation plans, so both Peggy and Davey try to get creative. Not exactly funny but there was a charm to it I liked. A bit.  The second story, where they try to get to see a football game they lost the tickets for, wasn’t as good. Going golfing with their young friend, Hector, and a parrot, was…okay, I guess. She also gets a new car, Davey ends up on a radio show but Peggy’s radio and refrigerator do each others’ jobs, and a reminder that this is a 1930s comic after all. At least the black guy in this one trying to become Davey’s valet isn’t drawn any weirder than any other male in this comic.

Peggy’s an interesting character. She is way too devoted to Davey, is a bit of a tomboy with her interests in football and golf (when she’s hitting balls into the lake to know what getting a “hole in one” feels like it doesn’t come off as her being a dumb blond), and I can see the attempts at humor but it really didn’t work for me.

Jigger by Gus Jud

It’s a collection of stories about a kid having fun alone or with friends. Not much else to say. They’re a page each, but unlike Happy, they’re all together.

Pop’s Night Out by Dick Dorgan

Barely any of these stories involved going out at night. One had a game with the boys get cancelled and the other had a wife of a different character wanting to buy a dress in case she got invited to a party. The rest is random stuff and I think only one was even mildly amusing for a second.

The Jamms

It’s our last story and by this point I really lost interest. Just some shenanigans of a husband and wife.

overall

I’d say that I knew why this comic only lasted four issues, but given other stories of the time period (comedy changes over time, and I’m judging by my tastes) I don’t think it was the stories. They aren’t spectacular, but I haven’t liked most of the humor of the period. The adventure story was okay and I’d like to see the rest of that. If anything hurts this comic it’s the formatting. At this point readers were used to comics being smaller magazines, not like the Sunday newspaper comic section. It might work on a newsrack but not a shelf or spinner rack. I didn’t think it was all that good, either, not being there at the time and this being hard to research I couldn’t tell you the real reason it didn’t spell. The format is my theory.