“Full length” is nine pages of 73?
Police Comics#9
Comic Magazines, Inc (May, 1942)
We’re back to the comic that gave us DC’s arguably most powerful of the lesser known heroes. A issue or so ago, Plas asked the readers to push to give him more page time. It looks like he got it, but I wouldn’t call it “full-length”. Still, it means he got more time to give us a good story. Is that what we got, and does it impact the other stories that show up? One way to find out.
Plastic Man: “Satan’s Son Sells Out To The Japs” by Jack Cole
A freakish dude going by “Hairy Arms” wants to join the Axis and kills his henchmen when they decide they’re crooks but they’re American crooks. As he kidnaps recruits, one of the surviving gangsters tells Eel what happened, meaning both the cops and the crooks want to stop his operation. That kind of makes this interesting. Officer Plotz ends up helping stop the villain but it’s the bad guys who want revenge for their fellow crooks and stop the guy’s robots. Oddly, nobody is named “Satan’s Son” and they talk about the Nazis more than the Japanese. Hairy just wants to switch sides for money. None of that stops this from being a good opener, though.
Eagle Evans: Flyer Of Fortune by Clark Williams
Eagle and Snap are flying American and British diplomats when they’re attacked by the Nazis and have to get help from the Russians. (We used to get along.) Not much to summarize but a darn good story.
Steele Kerrigan by Al Bryant
There’s a big chunk of a few of pages missing from this story, or would be if they didn’t scan a different version of the page and shoved it in here. Not sure why they posted both versions. Criminals with some powerful friends in the city government try to get revenge on a horse, which is not as stupid as it sounds. Steele has to bring them to justice when they switch targets to him. It’s an okay story.
711 by George E. Brenner
Crooks go after witnesses to their crimes, killing one witness under police protection…when the cop goes out for coffee. I don’t even know how to respond to that level of incompetence. To get the other one they have to break into prison, and of course it’s the one 711 uses as his base of operations. It’s the second time he’s fought criminals in the prison. I’m surprised how well they make this concept work, a hero falsely accused who only uses his escape tunnel to go out to fight crime.
The Manhunter
Our other Dan gets in trouble when a group of killers starts hunting witnesses on his beat, so the Manhunter has to bring them in…and gets help from three mysterious characters teased to be important in a later story. That last part is the only interesting thing about this story.
The Firebrand by Reed Crandall
A New Years party seems an odd time to show off new gun sight plans to Joan’s dad, but I’m wondering how the Nazi agents got in there. One of these days I want to find out if there really were Nazi or Japanese agents working in the US. Firebrand has to get the plans back, with Joan and Slugger trying to do the same thing. It’s a good little story.
Chic Carter: Police Reporter by Vernon Henkel
Chic and Monahan, who seem to be getting along now, stumble upon a rum smuggling operation when they’re driven off the road by a lightning storm. Again, not much to summarize but a good story. I guess The Sword is a memory in this comic. Not that it was all that memorable. Chic Carter alone seems to do just fine.
Phantom Lady by Arthur Peddy
The plot is okay. Japanese spies are about to be exposed by Senator Knight, so Sandra has to protect him as Phantom Lady. Instead she gets kidnapped and hit a few times, the senator survives being shot, and I’d like to know, if they have an American agent, why and how a Japanese man in the 1940s during World War II was able to get into a senate hearing about the spy operation. Plus, did she transform into Phantom Lady? I thought it was just an outfit and flashlight.
The Mouthpiece
Our crimefighting DA decides to bring down the current kingpin of crime in the city, but in the end he has to be rescued by a woman he came to help. Another easy summary, but this time the story isn’t that great unless you like the fight at the end.
The Human Bomb by Paul Carroll
I’m starting to wonder why Roy even has a fiance. Not that any other engaged person in this comic seems to care about their fiance’s, mind you. Roy travels with a friend to Argentina to secure boxite rights, but the owner is a Nazi. Or is he. Roy’s not very good at hiding his identity as the Human Bomb this story but otherwise it was okay.
overall
Mostly good stories and even the subpar ones weren’t terrible. Nice to see issues like that.
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