Melting the gun AND blowing it up. Seems like extra work.
Slam-Bang Comics #1
Fawcett Publications (March, 1940)
Since I’m saving the Captain Marvel Shazam stuff for pre-DC Tuesday Wednesday after I’m done with Quality’s entrants, there isn’t much of a showing from Fawcett on Golden Age Friday. This comic might change that…if it’s any good. It’s of course an anthology, but a new one. That’s all I can say to pad the homepage. Let’s get into the actual review.
Diamond Jack
Starting with the magic hero early, though Diamond Jack uses a magic ring rather than just being magical himself. Still able to counter a witch hired by some crooks he ran off to get revenge. He’s your typical Golden Age magical hero, just messing with the villains, but Jack’s willing to break out his fists and just punch dudes out, which is something different. Outside of captions always placed on the bottom even when the narration is a bit late, it’s an okay start.
The War Bird
Tom Sharpe is a mail pilot turned fighter pilot, getting involved in whatever war gives him the most adventure. I don’t know if these pilots existed in real life (though there were American pilots who joined the British forces before America entered the war) but there sure were a lot of them in fiction. Now he’s helping the French fight the German Sermian forces and their robot planes with devices that cause planes to crash. So why the main villain goes up himself in the final battle is anyone’s guess. It’s why he loses when he challenges our title character (it’s his nickname). It suffers the same caption issues as the previous story, but otherwise not bad for the time.
Jim Dolan
Former FBI agent Jim Dolan tackles unsolved cases and writes about them in his magazine. It’s a true crime story hero before Only Murders In The Building. (What, I don’t follow the genre. I can’t even watch that show.) This time it’s a crook’s hidden stash as he’s about to go to the electric chair, but some other mugs want that dough first. It only occasionally has the same caption placing issue as the other stories so far, but a good adventure.
Lucky Lawton
A pretty girl talks Lucky, traveling cowhand, into becoming the new Marshal. I don’t think it worked that way like it would a sheriff, but I’m not the guy to ask. Anyway, he and his dog, Pal, clean up this here town. Then he leaves, so not sure how the girl talked him into it so easily. Better use of caption narration and a short but satisfying story.
Lee Granger: Jungle King
And we have our first new Tarzan ripoff in awhile. This one finds something new besides boobs, though. Lee Granger is a scientist whose plane is brought down near a pygmy village by slave traders who don’t want him to find out about their operation. So he teaches them science, which I was on board with until he made a lion talk. Yeah, the science was pretty normal until then. So Lee and his talking lion Eric…yes, really…take on the slave traders. Outside of the talking lion this story isn’t as weird as it sounded. It was an interesting introduction. I wonder if Eric is related to Talky Tawny?
Hurricane Hansen
Brittan has declared war on its own citizens Kazilia, and American adventurer Hurricane Hansen (I wonder if he knows Hurricane Hart?) decides to sign up. It’s a good thing there are so many American adventurers with nothing better to do than join wars. Hansen is sent to rescue a British liner from the Kazilian navy, and he’ll have to deal with submarines, destroyers, and his namesake to do it. The captions continue their screw-up but only a couple of time. A good action story.
(By the way, BW comes up on the list of sites when you search Rocket Comics #1. Neat!)
Mark Swift And The Time Retarder
Don’t look at me. I didn’t name it. Blame grade school teacher Rodney Kent. Yes, a grade school teacher built a time machine and that was the best name he came up with. Young orphan Mark, “liked by everybody”, is our Jonny Quest for this story. With his time retarder, the “History Express”, Rodney is also going to predate Mister Peabody and Sherman (or Bill & Ted if that reference works better) and teach Mark about history by going there. I’m sure that won’t end badly for the space/time continuum. Better get that “A”, Mark! They get to see Vikings battle Indians…and side with the Vikings because the princess was part of the first, failed raid and Eric (not the talking lion, though that would have made this amazing) wants to rescue her. Poor choice, boys. Eric gets to do all the cool stuff like fight a dragon and tame its mate…wait, what? Guess the Peabody and Sherman reference was more apt than I thought. After surviving all that, Rodney wants to visit King Arthur next. Go home and take a break, man. You just saw history take it hard by having a Viking fight a Native American dragon. Interesting to read, but how did this make LESS sense that the obligatory magician hero?
overall
You definitely can’t call this boring. Weird at times and they need to work on narration caption box placement, but it wasn’t boring. I think I’ll check out the next issue.
BW Media Spotlight 