Now Plas is just showing off his trick shooting skills.
Police Comics #7
Comic Magazines, Inc (February, 1942)
I should be doing this with the heroes on the cover, but we did Plastic Man last issue. Firebrand has really gotten the short end of the stick from DC because they don’t seem to know what to do with him. I couldn’t find much about what Rod did in DC Comics outside of being bounced between universes. When his sister who I haven’t heard of, at least yet, developed pyrokinetic powers (think Steven King’s Firestarter), she took up the name. It’s been bounced to a few different characters since, including the latest, Janet Fals, who needs to beat people up to stay alive. (Yeah, it doesn’t make sense in the wiki and I doubt it makes sense in action.) Why even bother using the name at this point? Plus wearing asbestos is now shown to be a bad idea and he’s just a dude who drops a torch as his calling card.
It doesn’t help that Marvel Comics has their own Firebrand, usually some kind of extremist against “the system” or “the man” or whatever they’re doing at the time. This idea has also been slapped onto numerous characters over the years. It’s kind of a mess. Both companies are wasting a perfectly good name.
[Read along with me here of if that’s too light they have an alternate version that while darker it’s still easier to read for me, so that’s what I’m using.]
Firebrand by Reed Crandall
An interesting one for the period, as the story is told from the point of view of a CID agent from England who is relaying the events of how Firebrand saved him without knowing he’s talking to Firebrand. Or rather his alter ego, Rod. The agent is captured by the very criminals he was coming to identify but his kidnapper runs into Slugger driving Joan somewhere, which explains to the audience how Firebrand ended up there. It’s not explained by the agent doesn’t seem to know Joan is his friend’s fiance or how either Slugger or Firebrand knew about the papers the agent was carrying, but it’s still a pretty good story. Interesting to see events from the point of view of someone who doesn’t know Rod is Firebrand. The only problem is accents all over the place. I don’t know who’s British and who’s just American brutish.
711 by George E. Brenner
Criminals want to stage a prison break using fake guards. I don’t know why given how many guards at Dan’s prison are on the take anyway in these comics. 711 actually gets help from another lifer who wants to help stop the break before anyone gets hurt, including the warden. Fun joke in the end where 711 has to “get Dan Dyce” to maintain his identity.
Eagle Evans by Clark Williams
Eagle and Snap decide to take a flying job for the Chinese and end up fighting the Japanese, because World War II was a different time. For flying heroes they spend more time punching Japanese on the ground after being kidnapped and having their plane shot down later. They also steal a few enemy vehicles along the way. Not a whole lot to this one.
Chic Carter: Police Reporter
Chic follows Detective Monahan to the nearby Littletown to stop a man who hangs his random victims, and seems to be trying to chase everyone out of town. What follows on the last couple of pages is “how many twists can we sneak into one story”, which weakens it. I’m also wondering why they even bothered giving Chic a superhero identity when “The Sword” makes so few appearances and Chic seems to do all the crimefighting just fine without it?
Plastic Man by Jack Cole
Eel steals a bunch of furs as payment to join the United Crooks Of America, a mob that runs itself more like a club. One member tries to convince them Eel is a jinx, not realizing he’s actually undercover. Of course it’s a plan by Plastic Man to capture the whole group. Although, since part of that plan is sending “Eel” flying out of a moving car down a cliff, doesn’t that hurt his ability to use his old crime identity? Shouldn’t he be dead?
Steele Sterling by Al Bryant
A mobster wants Steele dead and one of his goons comes up with a plan to make that happen. Anne overhears it, which seems to play no part in stopping the actual assassination and just gets her kidnapped when they go to bring in the guys who were talking. It’s okay but not that great.
The Mouthpiece by Fred Guardineer
A pair of crooks silence a police detective looking to prove they’re planning to sell a stolen gunsight to a guy who may or may not be a Nazi. He’s German at least, and we did just see a World War II story with the Japanese. So apparently Bob can wear the exact same outfit in his DA job and as the Mouthpiece (which is also a slang term for a lawyer) and the mask is all he needs to conceal his identity. And people make fun of Clark Kent. It’s a short but decent adventure.
Phantom Lady by Arthur Peddy
Meanwhile Phantom Lady’s boyfriend can’t recognize her in her other identity even without a mask, as we’ve seen before. A man is shot at a party, and a clue turns out to be a coincidence that happens to lead to the culprits anyway, or at least some paid goons. We don’t find out who was behind the scheme…or if Phantom Lady fed someone to the trained lion at the zoo. There’s some interesting ideas but I don’t think Peddy had time to work the ending out well enough.
The Human Bomb by Paul Carroll
I’m confused by parts of this one. I get someone is framing the Human Bomb to steal some evidence (our theme for the issue) using nitro and comic book science. It’s comic book science that allows this series to live anyway. I can even accept there are comics based on the Quality characters because we see it all the time, like the police comics not named Police Comics but with superheroes. (Why isn’t this Superhero Comics?) But how does the newsboy who serves as an informant recognize the fake Human Bomb because his eyes don’t look like the one in the comics but he can tell it’s Roy because of his eyes when the comic shouldn’t know what his eyes look like and there’s a helmet with a window involved…something was not thought out here.
overall
A pretty uneven issue. There are good ideas not thought out amongst stories that were pretty good and the usual lame gags I ignore.
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