Theagenes

This is the #731 Mail Pilot, I take it? Very cool! The interior is actually the contents of the 1st MM BLB correct? Can you take of pic of the back cover?

Great books! Can't wait to see the Tecs!

Congratulations, Bill! That is awesome!

I was going through Gerber looking for covers to nominate and I discovered why that illustration of Chinese bandits looked so familiar: OK, back to the review. On the the two S&S features, I enjoyed Slam Bradley, but I thought Spy was a little flat. There has been a lot of discussion about the different influences on the two of them, but in Slam Bradley I see a lot of Chester Gould and Tracy. Another thing I noticed is that all of Schuster's male leads look like Superman (not just Bradley and Dr. Occult) and all of his female leads look like Lois Lane. I thought Claws of the Red Dragon was pretty well written, though obviously a Sax Rohmer/Fu Manchu knock-off. I would like to read some of the other installments. Larry Steele was the closest of all the stories to your standard film noir gumshoe fare, both visually and in the writing. Like CotRD, it's difficult to really judge with one piece of a multi-part story arc. Cosmo I thought was pretty weak storywise, though I liked the artwork. The figures were awkward, but I liked the grainy, sketchy linework - it works for a genre like this. The Range Detective was pretty lame and stretched my willing suspenstion of disbelief. CSI: Dodge City? Come on. Overall, I thought the writing on most of the stories in this issues was much better that what we saw in the two books from the Eisner/Iger shop, though the quality of the artwork was mixed.

OK review time. First I have to say I was very impressed with the quality of the art and writing on most of the stories. I've never read one of these early Tecs before and I suppose I had low expectations. After all, these early original comics books are full of the stuff that wasn't good enough to make it in the newspapers, right? But I found most of them to be entertaining reads. There were a few overused cliches and hackneyed themes, like the disgruntled ex-employee out for revenge, but for the most part you were getting a pretty good entertainment package for a dime - even a 1937 dime. Let's start with Flessel, since he's been in the spotlight here for the last week or so. It's easy to see why he got so many covers - he was clearly one of the top two or three artists in the National stable in these early years. I have to admit, I usually skip over the text stories, in GA books - often they are "throw-away" pieces anyway - but Flessel's illustrations made me actually stop and read "Rifles on the River." And, I have to say, it was not bad. It gives a little snippet of often-forgotten history - unofficial US involvement in the Chinese civil war. A number of American advisers, volunteers and mercenaries, like Kit in the story, were active in China during this period, supporting Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces against both Mao's Communist forces and the invading Japanese. As I mentioned, Flessel's amazing illustrations are what drew me in to the piece. I only wish the opening splash wasn't cropped in the center. The illustration below looks very familiar to me, but I can't imagine where I might have seen it before - has it appeared elsewhere? Moving on to Flessel's other work in the issue, Speed Saunders was one of the weakest stories in the issue - poor pacing, lame "disgruntled ex-employee" motive, every plot element seemed contrived and forced. But Flessel's artwork makes it visually enjoyable at least. It's interesting to see the different style he uses for regular panel work, than for his covers and splashes - cleaner, more distinct linework, less use of the thick brush stokes (I'm assuming he did most of his own inking). But he still throws in the occasional chiaroscuro-style film noir panel with heavy blacks, like this one: Great stuff from an amazing artist! Gotta go to work, but I'll try and comment on the two Siegel & Schuster pieces tonight.

What an amazing experience! Thank you so much for sharing it!

Ditto! That is a cool book!

Thanks BH. Maybe I can generate more interest with this book for the coming week. We've seen / talked a lot about Flessel recently but here's our chance to discuss the interiors of a pre-hero Detective. I picked Detective Comics # 7 for this week. It's a little earlier than the previous two since it came out in 1937 - Detective Comics # 7 Cool! Never read a pre-Batman Tec before!

Gorgeous book and welcome to GA!

That is awesome!! Nope. Just a "new pair of jeans" as one board member aptly opined recently. Are you saying that this still is not the BIG purchase you were hinting at? My god man there are only a couple of books that are bigger than this.

He does sound like a 70's porn star. *Bow wow chicka chicka!*

Hey, we just got stickied!

You can never have too many coffee mugs. First off, let me say that I love this cover! When he's on, Fine is way out of everyone else's league in this early period. The enlongated anatomy that his figures have sometimes does annoy me, but you don't have that here. Great compostion, dynamic action and plus I'm sucker for sword fighting covers. An underrated cover IMHO. The Flame story was by far my favorite - and again it's mostly due to Fine. I'm not as familiar with his interior work as with his covers, but I can see why there is so much praise for him in the Greatest GA Artist Thread. Not a bad a character and story either (Eisner -script?) - reminds me of the Phantom. Yarko was also well-drawn (Bob Powell? according to GCD) but the ending was a little weird. What was the point of him faking his death? The female detective got them to give up and confess without any help from Yarko, who only shows up after the fact to turn them into pearls so they'd be easy to carry? I don't get it. Humor strips aren't usually by cup of tea, but the Shorty feature was pretty funny actually. Dr. Fung was pretty cool too - Vampires, castles going up in flames, great stuff! I suppose Dr. Fung is supposed to be a Charlie Chan knock off? Tex Maxon was kind of generic. I'm pretty sure that the "Wonders That are True" are not true at all. Certainly the one about Ramses II is not (not to mention, Alexandria wasn't built until about 1000 years after Ramses). K-51 by Eisner was entertaining as well, although you never really get an explantion as to why Senor Anza was blowing up ships. Just a evil madman I suppose. The pacing of the ending was a little off - it took an entire anticlimatic page to finish off the story after the bad guy was already defeated. Z-19/Claire was great as a strong female character. Love the pseudonym - Rensie=Eisner. Gotta go to work, so I'll have to finish my review tonight.

Cool! Downloading now.

29 - no brainer.

I've been downloading some of the other early Planets and I just realized that the Pacific Comics reprint that I have is not a reprint of Planet no.1 like I thought - it's a compilation of stories from several issues. So the other Nelson Cole story I referenced early about the arms manufacturer is not from no. 1. I'll post the correct issue no. when I figure it out. Edit: It's from Planet #5. I feel pretty certain that both the writer and artist are the same as in #6 - the byline is "Beekman Terrill" but that's probably a pseudonym. Here's a page from it:

Well, my background is in history and anthropology so this kind of stuff sort of jumps out at me. Mike, to answer your question - I think that the only thing that can be said with reasonable certainty is that the writer of Nelson Cole is probably not the same writer as Gale Allen. I want to go back and download some more of these early Planets and read some more Nelson Cole stories to see if this anti-intervention theme is present. It just struck me as unusual - i'm used to seeing pro-war propaganda in GA comics, not anti-war. As for the writers, I remember reading that Iger wrote a lot of the scripts for the books that the Eisner-Iger shop packaged, but I think this issue (spring 1940?) was done after Eisner left to form his own shop(?). Maybe someone who knows more about the history of the Eisner-Iger shop can shed some light on who might have been doing the scripts on these storys. Did Bob Powell write as well as draw Gale Allen, perhaps?

That was a fun read! I love early Sci-Fi. This is only the second early issue of Planet that I've read, the other being the first issue, in the form of the Pacific Comics reprint from the 80's. The stories are, for the most part, generic and simplistic, and the artwork is often sloppy and awkward, but it must have been a great, cheap form of entertainment for kids that were fans of the Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon strips. As has been pointed out, many of the stories are really typical plots from other genres (western, jungle, detective, etc.) transplanted into a sci-fi setting, with only a couple of the stories, such as Don Granval being real sci-fi. One thing I'm always on the look out for in GA comics are glimpses of the socio-political context in which they are created. In several of the stories you have references to the events that were playing out in Europe in early 1940. In both Gale Allen and Planet Payson, the villain is a fascist-type dictator (even down to the uniforms). Also, both stories are making reference the Battle of the Atlantic, which had been underway since the previous Fall. German U-Boats were attacking Canadian supply ships trying to reach the UK, while the Brits and French were trying to blockade Germany (American involvement with Lend-Lease was still another year away). Gale Allen seems to be heavily influenced by Buck Rogers, with a futuristic Earth in danger of being conquered by an Eastern menace (Yellow Peril theme). Europe has been subjegated already and America will be next! (can you guess which side of the inventionist vs. isolationist debate this writer is on?) I love the reference to submarine warfare being banned - many people don't realize that submarine warfare was very controversial after WWI, much like land mines and cluster-bombs today. On a side note, GCD credits Bob Powell with the art on this one. In Planet Payson, the U-boat theme is there as well. Payson's mission is to protect shipping from raiders (submarines). He basically acts as the sub-hunter who locates the raider, then the destroyers come in to finish it off. Tracing the raiders back to their source, he finds that they are being sent out by a Pytho, fascist-looking dictator of Mars. Again the parallels with the growing war in Europe are evident. Of the stories that seem to be referencing the war, however, Nelson Cole is the most intriguing to me, as it seems to be taking the isolationist/anti-war view. The villain is a hawkish member of the President of Earth's cabinet who is secretly trying to provoke a Solar System (read: World) War. Cole forces the villain Gregor to confess, just in time to prevent all-out war. Comments in the LAST couple of panels ("What a waste of lives it would have been." and "I'm glad you let me investigate before blood was needlessly shed.") show clearly where the writer stood on the whole "should America get involved?" debate. The only other Nelson Cole story I've read was in Planet Comics 1 - in that one the villain is again trying to start a war, this time backed by an arms manufacturer who hopes to profit from it. The idea that wars are instigated by those who would profiteer from them was a common theme promoted by the anti-war movement in the years between the world wars (cf. Action Comics 2). It's fascinating to me to get a glimpse here and there from these GA comics of what people were thinking about and how they felt about the events taking place around them. It's often the case that you can learn more about a particular time and place in history by looking at the underlying themes in pop culture, rather than the contemporary non-fiction, which often has a conscious agenda. Great stuff.

Awesome copy! I'm jealous.

I think it's a great idea - I'm in!

Thanks! Me too - it's a run that I'd like to put together, but I'm not really in a rush to do it. But when a nice-looking copy of one of the scarcer early ones like this pops up I have to jump on it. And on a side note, even though I already posted it in the cigar thread the PV FB really belongs here:

Simply amazing books - all of you!!

Just won this a few minutes ago. I've had my eye on this particular copy since last summer. I always dug this cover, with Tarzan choking out the ape - it's actually a blown up Foster Sunday panel.

Nice theagenes! I was bidding on that sucker too! If you really want it, I'll do you a favor and trade it to you for your Tec 31. Sure! But you will have to add $7800 cash, and you have a deal! I was hopin' to catch you while you were still loopy from your pain meds.

Nice theagenes! I was bidding on that sucker too! If you really want it, I'll do you a favor and trade it to you for your Tec 31.