“Yesterday’s” Ashcan Comic> Flash/Thrill Comics #1

They’re only flunkies for the true villain: Murky Dismal! (80s points if you get the reference.)

Flash/Thrill Comics #1

Whiz Comics (January, 1940?)

I’m going to let the description from Comic Book Plus (read along with me here) explain what we’re about to read. This was apparently also made for the 9th anniversary of the Digital Comic Museum, another site that houses public domain comics. If you’d rather read this over there as a result, then read along with me there. It’s the same description:

Flash/Thrill Comics #1 – Ashcan Recreation-1939 Recreation. A meticulous recreation of the famous ashcan comics which introduced Captain Marvel as Captain Thunder. Original covers from Heritage have been used with Photoshop techniques to accurately reconstruct the never before reprinted inside front covers. Scans of Whiz Comics #2 and the aforementioned cover scans have been utilized and compared with the 1992 reprint of the Captain Thunder story to, as accurately as possible, reconstruct the content and placement of the original text. Also included are an original 4 page introduction and the probable contents of the ultra-rare Golden Arrow variant to Flash Comics #1.

So no scarlet speedsters in this one.  The cover isn’t the only page lacking color. There’s more trivia at the bottom of the page, like “When Better Publications acquired the rights to publish Thrilling Comics #1, Fawcett was forced to change the title of this magazine again: originally from Flash Comics #1, then Thrill Comics #1, then Whiz Comics #2 (#1).” I’ve been there and I wasn’t even publishing. Even on this site both “The Furman Files” and “Chapter By Chapter” turned out to have websites with the same name that I was unaware of. I stumbled on Chapter By Chapter, but The Furman Files guy wrote me. His political discussion site is no longer operating last I checked. but Chapter By Chapter seems to be a name of a few different types of sites, from media reviews to “the next chapter of our lives” kind of things.

At any rate, this isn’t so much a regular review, since I already have thanks to DC’s Millenium edition reprint of Whiz Comics #2, as a general review of the presentation.

The ashcan recreation starts with a bit of history. I’ll let you read the full story (which apparently involves someone stealing some unreleased ashcans when purchasing a file cabinet), but the important detail there is the names. Captain Thunder was beaten to the punch, some commenters guessing Captain Thunder and the Congo Lancers as the big culprit, a story from Jungle Comics, which I haven’t read. There’s also a comment by “positronic1” that agree with:

Okay, we know where Fawcett missed the boat on trademarking FLASH COMICS and THRILL COMICS, but whose trademark caused Fawcett to change Bill Parker’s originally intended name, “Captain Thunder”, to Captain MARVEL, and why weren’t they concerned about any possible trademark issues with Timely’s MARVEL (Mystery) COMICS? Seems to me that if Fawcett had just stuck with the original Parker idea of Captain Thunder, it would have caused DC a lot less headaches with the character that they now call “Shazam”. Of course, that doesn’t have anything to do with Fawcett, but maybe DC should have gone back to the original Captain Thunder name in 1972, since it should have been obvious that Marvel would *never* relinquish the trademark on “Captain Marvel” once they’d secured it. But DC jumped the gun and used “Captain Thunder” for a pseudo-CM battle with Superman Of course there’d have been some grousing from nostalgic fans of the original CM — but it’s a lot worse changing his name NOW, after another 45 years have passed.

We already saw a potential reason for Captain Thunder to be renamed Captain Marvel, though I do wonder why DC didn’t go with Captain Thunder all these years later instead of “Shazam”, having to come up with an excuse for Billy Batson to be able to say his own name when Freddy Freeman couldn’t when he was Captain Marvel Jr, that it matters how you say it and why. You say so, Geoff Johns. I’m more annoyed at how you ruined Billy’s personality and gave us the multiracial back-up heroes because diversity or whatever gets Johns kickbacks from the recent movies. That’s the real reason he did it. So if DC used his group in comics or other media he makes a few bucks.

From there, uploader Eric Schumacher goes over how he recreated the ashcan, using the DC reprints as a guide to reconstruct the surviving scans of the ashcan for both the Captain Thunder and Golden Arrow stories from Whiz Comics #2, technically the first issue because of weird publishing issues I brought up in my review of the Millenium Edition reprint. I don’t know why he puts the same color scan in there a second time before a third cover with the “Thrill Comics” variant of the logo. It is interesting to see the first page of the Captain Thunder Marvel story without color or the text for the caption on the first panel. That bit of text is missing from the first colored version of the page as well, with both pages having the dialog and narration at least. As for the review, here’s my review from the Whiz Comics version:

“A young boy, Billy Batson, lives on the street selling newspapers (that was an actual job back then, kids, before the internet), having been kicked out by his greedy uncle after his parents’ death. Following a man in a trench coat into the subway (a good message to send the kiddies), he ends up at the home of the wizard Shazam….okay, you should know most of this bit by now. Now with the power of Captain Marvel Thunder…”

Actually, the story ends at Billy trying to convince the radio station owner (no TV back then, so that’s where the reporters who didn’t work for great metropolitan newspapers went to benefit their superhero careers) that he’ll capture the phantom scientist behind the radio silencing plot. Ashcans were previews of comics to come, like the freebies you get at Free Comic Book Day or by the door at comic shops. It does mention that Billy is keeping Captain Thunder Marvel a secret, but that’s all the story we get in this one.

As for the Golden Arrow story, we actually get the full tale, so here’s my full review from Whiz Comics:

“Golden Arrow is the son of an inventor who discovered a non-flamable lighter-than-air gas, which I assume is helium. He takes his wife and son on a balloon trip using the gas to prove its effectiveness. However, in the west a bandit has the balloon shot down and steals the formula. Only the baby boy survives and is taken by a mountain lion and then rescued by a prospector who raises the boy. He becomes better than the animals, per usual, and even shoots arrows better than the Native Americans. (They name him Golden Arrow because foster daddy prospector has no use for the gold he finds…what?…and used them to make arrows for the lad. {shrugs})

“When the old man dies, Golden Arrow learns of his heritage and takes the formula back just as the crook tries to give it to his sons to sell for the second World War. (For the record, he claims he saved it for his sons. I have no idea why outside of ensuring it won’t be realized it was stolen from the “missing” scientist.) It’s a good story but I’m not sure it’s one to base a series of tales off of, and this wasn’t the man’s last appearance.”

Not having seen the regular ashcan I don’t know how accurate the recreation is. It’s not a bad presentation for trivia, and it’s free from the Digital Comics Museum and Comic Book Plus (I linked to both in the opening of this article). Otherwise, you can just read the actual comic. We’ll return to Whiz Comics and the other Captain Marvel Family books at some point in Tuesday’s “pre-DC” edition of “Yesterday’s” Comic if the site goes that long, but they’re also available on both sites except for ones DC claims aren’t public domain (I think they’re full of it, but I don’t know the details of their reasoning). As for the recreation, it’s the first ashcan I’ve seen (limited as that is) to have color, so that might be an error on the recreator, with pages in black and white like a coloring book. Again, good for trivia but getting the actual comic is the better option.