This might look cool if I new what they were safely leaping from.
Amazing Mystery Funnies #20
Centaur Publications (May, 1940)
COVER ART: Greg Chapian
And so we begin the May, 1940 comics–or at least that’s the cover date. If comics in the Golden Age are like today’s, and many of the oddities of publishing started here, the comic might have come out a month or two sooner. It is easier for Comic Book Plus to catalog, I guess. Either way, the comics wouldn’t know that Winston Churchill is now the UK Prime Minister and preparing to seriously push back the German advance. Plus we in the US still weren’t involved in the war. That won’t happen until the end of the following year. The people might not have wanted in, but if the writers weren’t trying to get us involved, they were at least milking it for story ideas, what with all the not-Germany countries trying to get us involved in the war as part of some take-over-the-world schemes we’ve seen.
We’re starting off with this comic, but it should be noted that one of the stories listed, “Space Patrol”, isn’t in this issue. Whether it’s missing from the scan or dropped before publishing I couldn’t really say. This being the first month using the reading list, that means it’s been consistently interesting enough so far. Let’s see if that trend continues.
The Fantom Of The Fair
Shouldn’t they be calling him something else if there not going to be any more fair-based stories? I know the World’s Fair is done (wait, that was the World’s Fair?) but fair happen all over. Have him protect other fairs, or just change his name to like…Fantom Of The Road or something. A professor creates a chemical that causes an explosive ray or…something. It’s not clear what he made, just that it’s so dangerous he wants to destroy it and gangsters want it. How the Fantom found out about this is also not clear. The obligatory beautiful daughter contributes nothing to the story. Fights were pretty good for the time but that’s about it.
Kern’l Kilgore by Paul Graham
Google AI and I worked out that “Kern’l” is a phonetic misspelling of “colonel”. It’s a long story. Ask it yourself. Point is Kilgore is a former soldier, and now soldier of fortune in this debut story. Kilgore was starting to get bored in the Balkan town of Slivonia (another possible misspell of Slavonia–someone get Paul a dictionary because spell check didn’t exist yet) until he gets caught up in a plot by the Phantom Princess to free the town from dictators. The story ends on a cliffhanger. How they all seem to know he’s a kern’l I couldn’t tell you. It’s an interesting start. Curious to see where it goes next issue.
The Inner Circle
George brings the Circle in after learning an island nation’s fishing expeditions are getting shot up by planes as part of a “protection racket”. It’s not as silly as it sounds. The ending is a bit rushed and there’s not much to summarize without noting that the Inner Circle somehow has their own destroyer (I wonder about this group). Two minor notes are a page that needed better panel layout and at one point the narrator thought he was there at the time but doesn’t the rest of the story before and after. For the most part it wasn’t too bad.
Larry Kane, The Adventure Hunter: “Murder Goes To College” by Dahl
Larry attends a football (sorry, “foot-ball”) game at his old college, when a player is murdered by a blowdart. I’m not sure why Larry is getting credit for stopping the murderer. Finding, sure, but someone has to save his butt and do the actual saving, and Larry didn’t call him in. It’s a minor nitpick. The story itself was okay.
Bill & Davey by James P. McCague
I think there’s a page or so missing from this one. Bill and Davey are shanghaied by Jamaica Jones for help with whatever he said in the missing pages to get them on his side. They fight a squid which I guess solved everything somehow, only now they’re marooned on an island thanks to the missing pages. It’s tough for me to review this one until they find a version with the rest of the story in. We’ll see if they get off next time.
Fantasy Isle chapter 4 by George Loomis
Tippy goes for the last item he needs for the wizard to bring his robots back to life, which I know from the recap because I don’t remember much of this story. Now he needs egg shells from a particular dinosaur, and makes friends with another one when he saves its life. Now he just needs to find his way back home. The title for the next installment, “Robot Revolt”, is not promising, but if I remember this little about the last three issues it won’t be very memorable.
Tiger by Jon Kolb
The story can’t seem to keep straight who’s Bill and who’s Jim. That’s not a good start. At least he remembers which one is Mary. A tiger stalks the workers of the plantation either Bill or Jim owns, and they’re both going to get it with Mary’s help. There really isn’t a lot of story in this plot. It kind of lacks any serious drama or tension because it doesn’t have time to, so what you get is rather bland for a tiger hunt story.
Jon Linton: Flyer, Scientist, Adventurer
Apparently even this comic isn’t safe from bad panel flow and shoving the narration to the bottom of the panel where the info is a bit late to the story. Satan Rex has a one story plan this time: tow an asteroid to hit New York City. The far off year of 2009 is doomed until Jon figures out how that force mist stuff works in probably a few minutes after visiting the city ruins, has the city build its own force wall, and uses his re-remodeled ship to use the stuff himself. Another weird bit is Rex calling up Jon to brag he has a new plan and repeats “I cannot fail”. Then he fails. Mediocre story.
Speed Centaur by Malcom Kildale
Apparently our crimefighting centaur can fly now. Sure, it’s not like this comic has ever made sense before. In what I’m sure could be a commentary on 2026 events, human smugglers bring “orientals” (never says what country and remember we weren’t at war with Japan yet) across the Mexican boarder by plane, but drops their “cargo” to their deaths if the boarder patrol plane gets too close. Such an incident brings Speed and Reel to the boarder to uncover the villains and bring them to justice. I mean…it’s Speed Centaur. You know this is the best form of crazy, and watching Speed use his human AND horse limbs to beat dudes up is kind of fun.
overall
A few misses and meh stories, but they’re surrounded by enough good ones to make this worth the read.
