Five years before he took up the role of Jonathan “Pa” Kent in Superman: The Movie, Glenn Ford starred in a semi-camp detective tv movie/pilot called Jarrett, which might just have introduced the first evil comic book collector in film and television…
Read MoreHow Weird was Weird Comics? Part 3
For twenty issues, between April 1940 and January 1942, Fox Publications released an anthology series titled Weird Comics. The stories inside those pages were light on internal continuity, represented a wide variety of genres — including westerns, sci-fi and jungle action — and were produced almost exclusively under pen names (although creators Don Rico, Louis Cazeneuve and Joe Simon, to name a few, have their fingerprints over broad swaths of the titles).
There were seventeen features across the lifespan of Weird, some better than the others — but the real question is “How weird were they?” If Weird Comics is going to promise weird comics, then they better deliver!
In this conclusion, it’s the dashing Dart, the energetic Dynamo, the soaring Eagle, the savage Marga The Panther Woman, and the supernatural Voodoo Man …
THE DART by Jerry Arbus
Issues 5-20
Terror of the Ancient Roman rackets (which sounds like a tennis club), the invincible Caius Martius battles evil in the age of Caesar with the power of his strong sword-arm and his uncanny ability to dart through the air!
“Darting” was “flight” in everything except name, albeit used sparingly and in short bursts. But Fox had already lost a copyright case from Superman’s publisher, National, and was probably shy about inviting any more comparisons between the Man of Steel to his stable of characters.
Such a menace was Caius Martius to the criminal underworld of antiquity that they conspire to lay him low with a sinister plot. Dissolved by sorcerous means and imprisoned in rock, Caius emerges unharmed 2200 years later, atop his stone prison in a modern-day museum. As is typical for a time-tossed character in the world of comics, he wanders outside and promptly gets into it with a couple of automobiles.
He also witnesses an orphan happen right before his eyes as a vicious drive-by shooting robs young Ace Barlow of his parents. Somehow adopting Ace, regardless of having just arrived from 250 BC, Caius trains the boy in Roman Wrestling and in darting through the air 101. Having taken care of all of a young orphan’s needs, the duo run into adventure as the masked vigilante The Dart and his bat-swinging kid sidekick, Ace the Amazing Boy!
The Dart, of course, continues to wield his Roman sword, and boy does he wield it! Crooks have never been quite so stabbed in such numbers as they are on the point of The Dart’s blade, including through the chest, the neck and right through the head. Of course, he also uses it to disarm crooks, cut guns and even cars in half, and threaten baddies, when he’s not simply slapping them in the face with the flat of the blade. Ace, armed with a wooden bat, both gives and receives some serious beatings over the course of his career, particularly in the head and face. In one story, Ace must stay home from school because his face is so badly bruised, which is a matter fir Child Protective Services.
The duo also pick up a Dartmobile, which is handy because the use of “darting” as a superpower comes and goes over the length of the feature. The Dart also eventually sheathes his sword, although Ace never lets go of that bat.
Caius Martius, in his very clever secret identity of Caius Martius Wheeler, takes a job as a mild-mannered history teacher. A fellow teacher, Miss Tilbury, adores The Dart in his superheroic identity and loathes him as a civilian. While the romantic triangle may seem common and maybe even tedious, it cannot be overstated how much Miss Tilbury loathes Caius Wheeler. Practically every installment ends with one or two panels of Miss Tilbury venomously upbraiding Caius Wheeler for lacking courage, wits and even manhood. She accuses him of causing the suicide of a fellow teacher and turns him in to the police on suspicion of murder. Let’s face it, she would’ve been happy to see him get the chair.
How weird was The Dart? One episode addresses the horrors of reefer madness, in which a promising student takes to the devil’s weed and ends up attacking his classroom with an axe. His strength is also magnified by the terrible drug. You have to wonder if this is stuff Miss Tillbury takes.
DYNAMO by Harry Weber
Issues: 8-19
If there’s anything you can say for Fox Comic’s lightning-charged Dynamo, it’s that he’s certainly one of the few superheroes in comics to strap himself into an electric chair before every adventure.
That’s because electrical engineer Jim Andrews has “become dynamic through an electric shock” and wields the power of Dynamo! Immensely powerful beginning in his debut in Weird’s sister publication, Science Comics, Jim must rely on constantly recharging his amazing powers from electrical sources. Sometimes that means picking up a charge from a hanging powerline, or from the ambient static electricity generated by mechanical death-traps, or sometimes just sticking his finger in an outlet and drinking up electricity like an episode of Mork and Mindy. When none of those options are available, however, Jim keeps a fully-functional electric chair — as well as other powerful electric devices — handy in his home lab, which must cause absolute misery for his neighbors. “Electricity’s going out again, must be Jim ritually electrocuting himself.”
Absorbing vast amounts of electricity grants Jim an amazing array of powers, including (but not limited to): Shoot lightning, be strong, intercept radio signals, melt asphalt, melt bombs, all sorts of general melting, freeze molten steel (?), repulse water, repulse boats, fix boats, read minds electrically, do ventriloquism, blow up planes, blow up boats, just generally blow things up and flight. As the feature continues, Jim’s powers mellow out a bit. In his last few adventures, for the most part, he’s reduced to shooting the occasional lightning bolt.
Despite this volume of superhuman abilities, Jim frequently runs out of power and must rely on his wits. In one episode, he leaves his cape behind in the hopes that a pursuing crook will pause to put it on and then be shot by his fellow crooks, which is exactly what happens. Very clever, this Dynamo.
Jim, in his civilian identity as an electrical engineer, often finds himself in the field when trouble occurs. With the defense industry heavily relying on engineers, Jim has a selection of saboteurs and spies to keep himself occupied in his colorful alternate identity.
How Weird Was Dynamo? In his first appearance in Science Comics No.1, the hero was called Electro. The name already having been claimed, Electro was rechristened Dynamo in his next appearance. Fox’s famously hasty schedules, however, were probably responsible for Dynamo sporting the letter “E” on his costume for two more issues.
THE EAGLE By Lester Raye
Issues: 8-20
Independently wealthy scientist Bill Powers invents a special antigravity serum which - when spritzed liberally on a special uniform - grants him a raptor-like faculty for flight. Seeing the crimefighting potential for his potent potion, he adopts the identity of the high-flying Eagle, leaping into battle against racketeers and other creeps.
The Eagle seems to have a whole walk-in closet full of special uniforms. In his inaugural run in Science Comics, it’s a fanfare of feathered finery in a catalog of colors – green, red, brown and gold – that make him look more like The Woodpecker, or a Grackle. By the time he moves to Weird Comics, he’s adopted a sleek blue union suit and flowing red cape, which he continues to wear (sometimes shirtless) for a dozen more issues. Finally, he decks himself out in patriotic plumage for the end of his existence, slapping a striped red-and-white cloak onto the back of his blue togs.
Whatever his wardrobe, the method of applying the anti-gravity serum remained fairly consistent. When he wasn’t merely pouring cupfuls of the liquid on his clothing, Bill would apply it using one of those old-time metal pesticide sprayers, like a Bugs Bunny cartoon.
Not only wealthy in workwear, anti-gravity serum, and money, The Eagle was also abounding with supporting characters. His butler Jason, unaware that his master maintained a dual identity, would thrill at the newspaper reports of The Eagle’s derring-do. Bill’s subsequent stint in the Army leaves Jason behind, but replaces him with the plucky and daring Sally, and the hapless farmboy cadet Lem.
Lem is a serious danger to himself and others. His capacity for self-harm is phenomenal. He groggily attempts to fight the Eagle in one story, getting his face pushed in for his trouble. In another, Lem manages to step into the same fox-trap twice – the first time, with his face. Lem surely must have died between issues.
Bill’s pre-eminent partner is Buddy, The Daredevil Boy! Leaping out of nowhere to aid the Eagle during a deadly struggle, the otherwise anonymous young boy signs on as the hero’s sidekick despite having no powers or special abilities – and the Eagle offering him none! Assisting the hero only in gym shorts and a string tee, Buddy only gets a costume of his own near the end of the run – but no powers. Dressed in a junior-sized version of the Eagle’s blue tunic and striped cape, Buddy must fly through the air by riding on the Eagle’s back with his arms clutched around the hero’s neck. How Buddy gets around when the Eagle doesn’t carry him is anyone’s guess.
Unusually for a Fox feature at the time, The Eagle also boasted recurring villains. The Gimp was a disfigured criminal who sported a wooden leg with a knife in it, while The Beast boasted a spade-like claw in place of his right arm. The two criminals didn’t get along, and were often facing off against one another when the Eagle and Buddy get involved. Strangely, considering his brutal reputation, The Beast seemed uneager to use his sharpened appendage against his nemesis, knocking the Eagle unconscious with a blow from the blunt side of his claw on three different occasions (Buddy gets the same treatment five times).
Getting knocked unconscious is not unusual for The Eagle. Not counting the nasty knocks provided by The Beast, Bill is otherwise knocked out on another five occasions over twelve appearances. Any further inconsistencies in the strip could be attributed to how often The Eagle takes a wooden chair to the noggin.
The Eagle goes on to helm his own comic for four issues in 1941. Avid fans could sign up to The Eagle’s fan club, The American Eagle Defenders, which included a membership badge, card and secret code.
How Weird Was The Eagle? It’s hard to estimate how expensive the anti-gravity formula was, especially when dispensed by the gallon, but eventually The Eagle gives up soaring, floating and flying. In his last few Weird appearances, he and Buddy have to rely on planes to fly and parachutes to keep from splattering against the ground.
MARGA THE PANTHER WOMAN by James J.Royal
Issues: 8-20
In his hidden jungle laboratory, the mad physio-biologist Dr.Von Dorf abducts a blonde American nurse and transforms her into a savage brunette by the secret process of injecting panther blood into a living human body. Understandably distressed by the sudden dye-job, the feral female attacks the doctor, leaving him for dead, and flees into the forest. With what little life remains in him, Von Dorf clumsily blows up his own laboratory, dying in the explosion and taking with him the secret of pouring a bunch of panther blood into a person. Well, that’s Dorf for ya!
In the jungle, Marga discovers that she now possesses powerful new animal senses – and urges! After killing a deer and smacking a lion around a little, the savage Marga finds a soothing influence in a new human friend, the blandly handsome aviator Ted Grant. By the time of her second appearance, Marga’s origin is simplified to her having been raised by a pack of panthers and then, later, being “a white girl inoculated with the traits of a black panther.” Somehow, they both seem less absurd than having been pumped up with cat juice, so let’s take it.
Marga possesses the heightened senses of the jungle predator, as well as agility, speed and strength. Of particular power is her teeth. Like the big cat from which she draws her name/blood, Marga can kill by ripping out her opponents’ throats – she dispenses a gorilla, a lion and a panther in this fashion. Must be hell on necking.
Wise to the ways of the jungle, Marga spends many of her adventures undoing the schemes of would-be tribal tyrants and protecting valuable gems and minerals from unsavory hands. She also briefly takes on an espionage job. Unlike most other Jungle Girl-type characters, she does very little in the way of putting a halt to poachers. This is probably because she’s too busy ripping the throats out of the local wildlife herself.
Besides Ted, Marga counts among her allies “Chimp,” a tiny monkey who conveniently brings her messages and alarms when needed. Unlike many other jungle heroes, none of the larger animals of the wild come to Marga’s aid, probably because she’s ended so many of their lives. Over the course of the strip, she chucks at least six jungle cats and one rhinoceros into a deadly pit, and rips half a trunk from a rampaging elephant, which is the last thing you’d do to an elephant if you were trying to calm it down.
How weird is Marga The Panther Woman? Like fellow Weird Comics features The Eagle, The Dart and Dynamo, Marga initially appeared as an ongoing adventure in several issues of Science Comics. In that book, she spends the back half of her first appearance stealing a spaceship. That’s right, this strip originally took place in the future! By the time she arrives in Weird, Marga’s milieu is the modern-day setting of the then-popular Jungle Girl genre, which is a shame. Outer space probably has jungles too!
VOODOO MAN by Allan Spectre
Issues: 1-7
Voodooman isn’t the only feature in Weird Comics to be named for its recurring villain, or to change creative teams between practically every installment. But none of the other alumni played quite as fast and loose with its own continuity as this one did!
The titular Voodoo Man is “Boanga,” an evil and powerful houngan of colonial Haiti whose pursuit of mastery over life and death puts him in frequent conflict with the white settlers of the region — particularly the heroic Dr.Bob Warren. After that, pretty much everything else is up in the air.
Because Voodoo Man was a feature that simply couldn’t stop rebooting itself!
For instance, Bob is frequently assisted by “Pedro,” sometimes referred to as “Petro,” a sidekick who is sometimes a brooding white-haired gentleman in jodhpurs, sometimes a young local, and sometimes an older local. There is also almost always a young white woman to fall prey to Voodoo Man’s spooky machinations, but never the same one twice. Bob is sometimes a local doctor, sometimes an operative of the government, and – halfway through the strip’s run, when he’d already starred in a half-dozen adventures — a newcomer to the storyline.
Voodoo Man himself has a habit of dying at the end of each chapter and reappearing without explanation in the next (although, surely, the explanation is voodoo!). Boanga doesn’t even appear at all in one adventure, being replaced by a character in Mayan dress who is referred to as The Grand Zombie. Lucifer himself makes a singular appearance as Boanga’s boss, decked out in Mephistophelean costume as he’s driven from the body of a hypnotized victim.
Boanga’s powers are vast. Besides creating common-or-garden zombies, he can also transform people into animals, command the panthers of the deep jungle, and summon Lucifer’s Goat-Men – satyr-like creatures who “deal with fire,” which makes them sound like insurance adjusters. His most enchanting performance involved hypnotizing his victim with ventriloquism and a large frog.
Bob and his allies occasionally employ magic to battle back against Voodoo Man. A sympathetic houngan provides Pedro with the head of a golden bird, the power of which was called forward with the magic words “Swambi no gara” (That phrase is either absolute nonsense or means “I’m giving you the bird”). Crucifixes were occasionally wielded to ward off evil spirits, and the white settlers weren’t above scaring their foes with burning crosses. But then, they’re like that sometimes.
How weird was Voodoo Man? In the pages of Weird Comics, Voodoo Man was a clearly demonstrable villain, frequently setting his sights on murder, mayhem, and forced zombification. However, readers who came over from the character’s sole appearance in Samson Comics #3 might have had a different perspective – in that story, Voodoo Man is called upon to avenge the cruel beatings and deaths of black slaves at the hands of a local plantation owner. “He deserved to die from what I know of him” says one of Bob’s friends as they survey the corpse, “But we can’t have white men murdered.” Sure you can! All you need is a little voodoo.
Thanks to the Digital Comics Museum for scanning, uploading and making available these comics. Please visit and support Digital Comics Museum.
How Weird was Weird Comics? Part 2
For twenty issues, between April 1940 and January 1942, Fox Publications released an anthology series titled Weird Comics. The stories inside those pages were light on internal continuity, represented a wide variety of genres — including westerns, sci-fi and jungle action — and were produced almost exclusively under pen names (although creators Don Rico, Louis Cazeneuve and Joe Simon, to name a few, have their fingerprints over broad swaths of the titles).
There were seventeen features across the lifespan of Weird, some better than the others — but the real question is “How weird were they?” If Weird Comics is going to promise weird comics, then they better deliver!
In Part Two, it’s the futuristic Blast Bennet, the insidious Doctor Mortal, the explosive Dynamite Thor, the undersea adventurer Navy Jones and barnstormer Swoop Curtiss …
BLAST BENNET by Spencer Allan
Appears in issues 1-9, 11-17
The “When” of Blast Bennett’s futuristic adventures is a little vague, but it’s clearly some time after the distant year of 1970 AD (A space pirate treasure map discovered in one adventure claims to have been buried around that time). Whenever it is, space travel is common and the celestial spheres of the solar system are open to exploration – and exploitation!
The “Why” of Blast Bennett’s futuristic adventures is even more vague. Assisted by his nearly-incompetent kid sidekick Red, Blast travels the breadth of the width of the solar system for no particularly good reason except to get into fights.
Despite being armed with an “Explosion Gun,” and having all manner of futuristic weaponry available to him, Blast prefers his fists. Besides battering a plethora of creeps, crooks and cretins, Blast also takes time to knock out several monstrously large aliens, many large alien-y monsters, and robots of assorted sizes. It’s all for the greater good.
Blast’s adventures rarely rise above the standard science fiction adventure story of the day – an alien princess requiring rescue, some crooks hiding out on an asteroid, a monster menacing a meteor. Lest the remedial threats prove too easy for Blast, Red was always there to complicate matters with his baffling inability to do much right..
Despite the standard-issue sci-fi threats that monopolized his feature, Blast knows a few foes by name – a Zom here, a Karnak there. The most interesting villain is almost Ann Harper, a debutante turned space pirate, whose momentum is abbreviated when Blast locks her in a box.
While the strip was credited to “Spencer Allen,” it was – like many Weird Comics features – at least penciled by Don Rico. Despite being independent operators, Red and Blast eagerly join the Space Patrol in Weird Comics #13. “Gee! Now we’re cops!” exclaims Red. Keep it to yourself, kid.
How weird was Blast Bennet? An entertaining feature of Blast Bennet was the multiple attempts for the letterer to correctly spell “immensities” in the opening blurb of each story. Both “immenseties” and “emensities” make their presence known in different stories. This is probably why most science fiction writers opt for “vastness.”
DOCTOR MORTAL by Godfrey Clarke
Appears in issues 1-16
One of two long-running features in Weird Comics to feature a villain (see also Sorceress of Zoom), Dr.Mortal tells the tale of a mad scientist bent on world domination, and the headaches that his niece Marlene and her fiancee Gary Brent cause him.
Mortal’s modus operandi is kidnapping innocent men off the street and turning them into monsters, for his own purposes. It’s made pretty clear that these kinds of antics led to Mortal being “kicked out of the medical profession,” according to more than one introductory caption. You don’t usually find out how mad scientists earned their PhDs…
For the most part, Mortal is content to assemble lumbering, fanged brutes for his own purposes, but he often busts out a specialty model. He jams a corpse filled with lion entrails into a steam bath and creates a ferocious Lion Man, on one occasion. On another, he makes a “super-automaton,” which turns on him before being destroyed. He can shrink his foes to the size of insects, or enlarge insects to the size of men, and gives recaptured youth to old wealthy clients by transferring their minds into the bodies of young healthy victims, just to name a few of his proclivities. He’s like the Amazon.com of body horror.
His niece Marlene (who does, once or twice, refer to him as “Father”) frequently intuits that her uncle is up to no good, which is the cue for Gary and the police to scupper the old man’s fearsome fiddle-di-dees. This usually results in the apparent death of the Doctor. Consistently, in these moments, Gary will manfully clutch Marlene around the shoulders and say “we’ve surely seen the last of him,” only for Marlene to ponder “Or have we?” Some strips never get an ending, but this one’s got nothing but!
Mortal possesses remarkable flair, even for a mad scientist. On one occasion, in order to warn his niece and her fiance to stay out of his way, Mortal orders that Gary be attacked with a strong swat to the face by a monster henchman wielding a rubber stamp, resulting in the message “Keep out of my way … or die!” rising in red welts on Gary’s cheek, complete with Dr.Mortal’s signature..
“Now I can wreak my revenge on society” serves as Mortal’s colorful catchphrase, a triumphant exclamation which caps off his more successful experiments. When, in one adventure, he proves that his monster henchmen can breathe under water, for instance, he celebrates by declaring that it’s time to start his revenge against society. When he perfects a monster who can dig through the ground like a cartoon mole, same deal.
How weird was Doctor Mortal? While not exactly an exceptional piece of Golden Age storytelling, Dr.Mortal rewards its readers with some (probably unintentionally) funny moments, as well as some inklings of compelling horror, here and there. A story in which he injects a corpse’s memory into a gorilla is surprisingly creepy.
DYNAMITE THOR by Wright Lincoln
Appears in issues 6-7
Dedicated to “blasting the rackets to atoms,” demolitions expert Peter Thor uses his almost-supernatural skills with dynamite to fight crime as – Dynamite Thor, The Explosion Man!
Bare-legged and maskless, Dynamite is sometimes portrayed with a golden cape, and the starburst emblem on his chest is sometimes enhanced with a signature “T.” What Dynamite Thor always counts among his most flamboyant accessories, however, is the belt full of dynamite from which he produces his crimefighting je ne sais quoi. In many ways, it’s similar to Batman’s utility belt, if everything in Batman’s utility belt exploded.
Although his stories fail to delve into the technical details, Dynamite’s combustible craftiness puts him in command of a wide array of creatively volatile bombs.
Most of his arsenal is capable only of crude destruction. In the course of his adventures, Dynamite Thor puts an explosive end to planes, bombs, torpedos, buildings, guns and ships. With more specific explosive concoctions, he’s capable of generating shaped blasts which will cleanly knock a thick oak door from its hinges, and more subtle ones which will harmlessly knock the gun out of a crook’s hand, claiming nary a finger. The upper limit of his inflammable armory can only be guessed at – at one point, he douses a fuel depot inferno with a single shot!
Other charges are capable of practically-surgical strikes. At one point, Dynamite Thor uses explosives to silently remove the roof from a crooks’ hideout. His bombs were also capable of quietly and invisibly melting metal, targeting other bombs and missiles, and – in some unexplained fashion – “counteracting acid.”
Peter also demonstrates, on more than one occasion, the ability to tightrope walk across power lines. In fact, it seems to be his second favorite form of locomotion.
Because Dynamite Thor’s most audacious use of bombs is – flight!
“Immune to the effects of explosives,” explains one caption, “He can propel himself through the air with dynamite.” Technically speaking, anyone can propel themselves through the air with dynamite. It’s landing in one piece which is the real trick, and which Peter carries out by somehow having inoculated himself against the destructive effects of dynamite.
(The visual effect which denotes Peter’s passage through the air is, typically, little clouds emerging at equal distances behind him at waist-height. There is not a soul on Earth mature enough to look at a drawing of Dynamite Thor launching himself across the sky and to not think it looks like he’s tooting out little guffs.
Despite laughing off bomb bursts, Thor remains vulnerable to all other sorts of non-explosive physical injury, including gunfire or a conk on the head. If, for even a moment, you thought he might be vulnerable to Atom Rays, well, one story takes pains to point out that Dynamite Thor has a Neutron Shield just for that very complication. I don’t know what any of that means
“He uses his expert knowledge of high explosives to rid the world of crime” explains one caption, which might account for the unusually high rate of property damage in a Dynamite Thor feature. Besides knocking out Nazi war machines, Thor also has a habit of catching crooks by blowing good ol’ American bridges out from under them, or causing municipal chaos by dropping a water tower on a fleeing foe.
How weird was Dynamite Thor? Dynamite Thor runs in two issues of Weird before finishing up in Blue Beetle Comics. In Weird, he follows the run of an unrelated hero with a similar name (see Thor, God of Thunder). Both men, in their secret identities, have a girlfriend named Glenda. I like to think she’s the same girl in both series, and she’s got a type – Thors.
NAVY JONES by Bert Whitman
Appears in issues 8, 10
Navy Jones had been a journeyman book elsewhere in Fox’s line, mostly – and originally – from Science Comics. This, of course, not only raises the question of whether Navy Jones was weird enough for Weird Comics, but also whether he was scientific enough for Science Comics.
Judge for yourself. Replacing Weird Comics’ previous undersea strip – the often-confusing Typhon – Navy Jones told the tale of the former commander of the deep-sea submarine Z-81 turned champion of the kingdom of Princess Coral. Sounds like nice work.
Rescued from his sinking sub, which had collided with a mine “from a long-forgotten war,” Navy is taken before the human ruler of a nation of fearsome-looking fish-men. Jones has the bad luck of showing up during the Prime Minister’s power grab, which gets him pelted with chunks of reef by a vicious mob of mackerel. I think the Prime Minister is a crab, by the way. In any case, the King hooks Navy Jones up with some life-saving surgery that makes the former surface-dweller into a 24-7 water-breather, and also his daughter’s number.
In the pages of Weird, Navy Jones only takes the boat out twice:
First, the Princess and Jones help rout an invasion of the good ol’ USA by “the dictator of Europe,” with the help of longtime pal and frequent ally Captain Nemo. The trio handily scuppers the foreign tyrant’s phalanx of underwater tanks, which is a sentence I bet you didn’t expect to read today.
In his second Weird Comics appearance, Navy puts a definitive end to a deep-sea bunker full of pirates by burning a hole in their protective dome and letting the ocean pressure finish the job. Well, what do you know – It’s scientific enough for Science Comics after all!
How weird was Navy Jones? Navy was a direct descendant of Davy Jones, portrayed here as a long-dead mariner, and is shown laying a wreath at his tomb.
SWOOP CURTISS by Robert Keen
Appears in issues 17-20
American flyboys “Swoop” Curtiss (sometimes “Curtis”) and his brobdingnagian buddy, the burly “Banana-Boat,” find themselves “fighting side by side with the gallant flyers of the R.A.F.” after a slight navigational error drops them in England in the middle of The Blitz. They were trying to get to Maine.
The 3,000-mile mistake is the responsibility of Banana-Boat (sometimes only “Bananaboat”), a well-meaning but titanic idiot who ends up hindering Swoop’s heroics as often as he’s helpful. BB’s not much of a bombardier (he’s too big), or a gunner (too big), or even a co-pilot (he overshoots their destination by a whole ocean), and he has a habit of falling out of airplanes (twice). To his credit, he sometimes stumbles into heroics of his own. On one occasion, he successfully infiltrates a Nazi airdome in a stolen uniform two sizes too small, then casually ignites the fuel supply, destroying countless enemy aircraft. They’re gonna give him a medal for being this big and dumb.
Swoop, by contrast, can’t do much wrong. A dashing and daring pilot of Squadron FZ (That would be “F-Zed”), the impulsive Curtiss is as often an annoyance to his superiors as he is to the Luftwaffe. Regardless, he’s able to pull off astonishing aerobatic maneuvers like landing a stolen Fokker on the back of a British bomber in mid-flight, or intercepting plummeting parachutists with an outstretched hand.
Despite his brief run, Swoop is around long enough to pick up a Nazi nemesis. Both on the ground and in the air, he is drawn into conflict with a notorious Deutsche dogfighter named Gorrit. The vicious Gorrit frequently targets civilians, which makes him an extra-nasty Nazi. He’s still at large when the strip ends with Weird Comics #20.
How weird is Swoop Curtiss? Entertainingly drawn by a pseudonymous Robert Keen, Swoop Curtiss shouldn’t be confused with other aerial adventurers Swoop Smith (boy pilot), or Cloud Curtis (man pilot), or even Swoop Storm (World’s Youngest Flyer), all from Lev Gleason Comics.
Coming up in Part 3: The propulsive Dart, the dynamic Dynamo, the patriotic Eagle, Marga the ferocious Panther Woman and the dire jungle saga of Voodooman …
Thanks to the Digital Comics Museum for scanning, uploading and making available these comics. Please visit and support Digital Comics Museum.
How Weird was Weird Comics? Part 1
Weird Comics — How weird was it? In Part One, we’ll meet southwestern superhero Bird Man, modern-day cowboy Black Rider, literary swordsman The Rapier and the wicked wandering witch called the Sorceress of Zoom, as well as one of comics’ earliest incarnations of Thor (God of Thunder!), and the totally inconsistent undersea adventures of Typhon …
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