January 1938: New Adventure Comics #23

Cover by Creig Flessel

 

'Steve Conrad' (by Creig Flessel) just gets crazier and crazier.  Steve spends most of the strip punching alligator men in a bid to stop his girlfriend Myra from being forced to marry their king. Then, completely out of nowhere, a horde of giant turtles attacks everybody.

'Federal Men' (by Siegel and Shuster) is back to showing Junior Federal Men Club nonsense.  In this strip a bunch of girls prove that they're good enough to join the JFMC.  I suppose it's a worthwhile message to be sending, but it really does feel as though Siegel and Shuster are trying to further a cause rather than tell exciting yarns.

'Robin Hood' (by Sven Elven) is a new strip about the eponymous English hero.  I don't know if this is an adaptation of an existing tale or not, but it doesn't really match with any versions that I know about.  In this chapter we see Robin Hood meet a bunch of wardens in the King's forest.  They mock him, and bet him that he can't even draw his own bow.  Robin answers the challenge and shoots down a deer, but is then arrested for hunting the King's game.  This one is quite well done, especially by Sven Elven's usually tedious standards, but I suppose that he does have some good material to work with.  (As a side note, "The Adventures of Robin Hood" starring Errol Flynn came out in May of 1938, a good few months after the start of this strip.)

Bill Patrick seemed to have disappeared for a few months, but he's back in this issue with 'Monty of the Mounties', a one-off strip about a Mountie on the trail of a dangerous criminal, who arrives just in  time to see said criminal being beaten by his wife.  What would a Golden Age comic be without a dose of good old domestic abuse comedy, eh?