Thursday, July 12, 2012

June 1940: Smash Comics #13

Cover by Gill Fox

'The Purple Trio' (by S.M. Iger and Alex Blum): The Purple Trio, a group of vaudevillians who fight crime, make their debut here. Tiny is a cigar-smoking midget, Rocky is an acrobat, and Warren is a magician.  In this story they take on a group of racketeers who are taking money from grieving widows. The approach is humorous, and there's even the classic gag where the midget pretends to be a baby. What can I say, I'm a sucker for dwarf humour.

'Philpot Veep' (by John Devlin): This is the final appearance of Philpot Veep, a Sherlock Holmes parody strip. I haven't written much about it before, because I've not been dealing with the shorter humour strips, but I always liked this one.  It's not the sharpest parody out there, but it still pokes fun at Holmes and the detective genre in an amusing way, right down to Veep's occasional use of cocaine.

In other stories:

In 'Espionage' (by Will Eisner) the Black X must rescue a traitor from the Devil's Isle penal colony before he can sell US secrets to foreign spies. 'Chic Carter' (by Vernon Henkel) deals with a gang of fur thieves. 'Invisible Justice' (by Art Pinajian) tackles a Chinese villain called the Golden Dragon, who has kidnapped a munitions magnate to build his own arsenal. 'Wings Wendall' (by Vernon Henkel) must safeguard a new automatic rifle from foreign agents. 'Clip Chance' (by George Brenner) helps a cop track down some crooks who are hiding behind a waterfall. 'Magno the Miracle Man' (by Paul Gustavson) deals with foreign agents who are hijacking US ships. 'Abdul the Arab' (by Bob Powell) takes on an Arab bandit chief, which is all he ever does. 'Captain Cook of Scotland Yard' (by William A. Smith) exposes a Chinese villain called The Key as the local prison warden. And 'Bozo the Robot' (by George Brenner) stops some thugs from stealing the formula for a cure to pneumonia.

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