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help solve a 70 year old comic mystery

Started by Crimebuster,

18 posts in this topic

Crimebuster

Crimebuster

Posted
Posted

Hello Golden Age fans,

 

Over on the Comics Should Be Good blog, blogmeister Brian Cronin has posted a request for help solving a comic book mystery. In short, there's a 78-year-old comic book fan trying to track down a specific story he remembers reading between 1942 and 1945. He's been looking for the comic for years - decades even - but hasn't been able to find it.

 

I thought that if anybody had the collective knowledge to track it down, it would be you fellows. Here's the gentleman's story:

 

" Having been evacuated from London during the bombing raids of the last war, my uncle (who lived in Washington) used to send me a small selection of American Comics. I was away for about five years until my eleventh birthday in 1945. I very much enjoyed these comics, although some of them were pretty horrific to my young eyes. Later I developed a long career in Social Work where the most often asked question was ‘Why?’. Although I had worked out many answers to that question it occurred to me one day that part of my motivation lay in a comic that I had read in those early years.

 

The comic in question was an adventure comic of that time, full of brave wartime heroes but in the middle pages was a story with a ‘moral message’. That was probably in black and white although I think the rest was in colour. The one that came so dramatically into my memory went as follows:

 

The first scenes showed a regular American lad at his high school sports, winning the race and being hailed as a hero. The second sequence went to the other side of the tracks where a lad was caught stealing. As he was challenged by a cop he ran off and was shot dead. The message was that in those seconds he had run faster than the posh boy. The message was clear!

 

This issue would probably have been published between about 1942 to 1945.

 

I have searched every comic shop in the United Kingdom. Now that my family live in Brooklyn I am in America frequently and have spent many days in the archives of the New York Public Library searching for the publication but unfortunately to no avail."

 

 

hm

 

Here's the link to the blog: http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2013/02/15/the-great-comic-book-detectives-a-nearly-70-year-old-mystery/

 

 

My first instinct, naturally, is that it sounds like it might be a Charles Biro tale from Boy Comics or Daredevil. It doesn't seem to be a Crimebuster story from what I remember, but I haven't read all the other features in Boy during this period. But I could be very wrong.

 

Anyone know comic what this story is from?

 

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dgarthwaite-migration

dgarthwaite-migration

Posted
Posted
Hello Golden Age fans,

 

Over on the Comics Should Be Good blog, blogmeister Brian Cronin has posted a request for help solving a comic book mystery. In short, there's a 78-year-old comic book fan trying to track down a specific story he remembers reading between 1942 and 1945. He's been looking for the comic for years - decades even - but hasn't been able to find it.

 

(snip)

 

The comic in question was an adventure comic of that time, full of brave wartime heroes but in the middle pages was a story with a ‘moral message’. That was probably in black and white although I think the rest was in colour. The one that came so dramatically into my memory went as follows:

 

The first scenes showed a regular American lad at his high school sports, winning the race and being hailed as a hero. The second sequence went to the other side of the tracks where a lad was caught stealing. As he was challenged by a cop he ran off and was shot dead. The message was that in those seconds he had run faster than the posh boy. The message was clear!

 

This issue would probably have been published between about 1942 to 1945.

 

(snip)

 

My first instinct, naturally, is that it sounds like it might be a Charles Biro tale from Boy Comics or Daredevil. It doesn't seem to be a Crimebuster story from what I remember, but I haven't read all the other features in Boy during this period. But I could be very wrong.

 

Anyone know comic what this story is from?

 

Happy searching...

 

http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?cid=111

http://digitalcomicmuseum.com/index.php?cid=110

 

It's too much for me to sift through.

 

DG

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vaillant

vaillant

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Posted

If rjpb suspect proves wrong (is there someone who can check?) I think that you are correct in your suspects, C.B.. It sounds pretty much a Daredevil story, but I have read a very small part of them.

 

There are often similar situations, with a more marked moral scenario, in the stories from issues in the 35-55 range. But those are mostly from 1946 onwards… hm

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vaillant

vaillant

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OK, it may be it: as in many Daredevil strong moral parables, the story revolves around a single character, but here it is more interesting because it’s in fact two stories in one. There is a Peter, and another Peter, whose story goes differently, in the second half of the book. A big story of 35 pages.

 

The candidate could be the Peter from the first story, here the two pages with similar content to the one you described (larger versions below):

The only problem is that issue #50 is from 1948. hm

 

wQwQHfCl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/wQwQHfC.jpg

 

a1erZ9Tl.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/a1erZ9T.jpg

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Scrooge

Scrooge

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If in the second version Pete goes to the Olympics, you probably have a winner. As for the time frame, given how it has been it's possible that the person forgot and also given how stories were recycled, there is an earlier version of this somewhere else.

 

Regardless, thanks for the research and the post.

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rjpb

rjpb

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vaillant

 

My response was meant as a joke, which probably doesn't travel well outside the U.S. where Highlights magazine was a pre-school and pediatrician's office staple for generations, and Goofus and Gallant was a regular feature. Cracked.com's excellent take down of Goofus and Gallant

 

I suspect your theory about the story in Daredevil #50 is correct, it has too many hallmark's of the OP's memory of the story not to be. That it's from 1948 is probably not of much consequence as it is easy to misremember dates and sequence of events after 20 years, let alone 70.

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Crimebuster

Crimebuster

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This looks right to me. I will run it up the flagpole and let everyone know whatthe results are. Thanks for the help.

 

Though maybe I shouldn't thank anyone yet, as I suspect I'm going to end up dropping way too much money on issues of Daredevil based on this preview. I do move me some Charles Biro. :cloud9:

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vaillant

vaillant

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If in the second version Pete goes to the Olympics, you probably have a winner.

Yes, the second Pete obviously does it right, but I don’t think the gentleman asked about that part. What were you referring to? There are also other elements which do not coincide (e.g. the "black and white").

Actually, I still don’t have a copy of #50, but I have an eBook and luckily I browsed the story while searching the best ones, last year.

 

I’d be very glad if I spotted it. The OP says «evacuated from London during the bombing raids of the last war, my uncle (who lived in Washington) used to send me a small selection of American Comics», so as an italian this would be a great way to make amends on my country’s part… ;)

 

@rjpb: Thanks for the explanation. :D

 

P.S. If you read the last but two, and the penultimate panel of the last page, this is also pretty revealing of the ambivalent sentiments there must have been at the time towards "Crime Does Not Pay": Lev Gleason was somewhat attaining a goal of education through exciting fiction on the pages of Daredevil, but at the same time he problematicly indulged in disturbing and lurid depictions of crimes on the pages of his comics.

 

«Hey, don’t take it so to heart, Scarecrow! I’ll admit it’s a tragic story, but remember, it’s only fiction!».

Daredevil is great! :D

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