July 1940: More Fun Comics #58

Cover by Bernard Baily

'The Spectre' (by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily): The Spectre goes up against a crooked businessman who is trying to kill a warehouse owner who knows about his shifty dealings. This is strictly small potatoes for the Spectre, and there's never any doubt of the outcome. The only spot of interest comes from a bit of falsely manufactured drama, as the Spectre is inexplicably drawn into the spirit world while trying to save the warehouse owner from a bomb. It's never explained, and is just a very weak piece of storytelling.

'Doctor Fate' (by Gardner Fox and Howard Sherman): This strip is a weird mix of the poetic and the prosaic. Fate must battle a wizard who has stolen a powerful book that contains "all secrets", and is capable of destroying the world. Epic enough, yes? Except that the wizard is using it to steal money. And Fate stops him with a punch to the jaw. But then there are really cool touches, such as Fate burning the book and scattering the ashes into the sea, only for thousands of fish to die because of its evil power. If Fox and Sherman would just go balls out epic this could be a great strip.

In other stories:

'Detective Sergeant Carey' (by Joe Donohoe) investigates the murder of a trapeze artist. 'Congo Bill' (by Whitney Ellsworth and George Papp) deals with a tribe of leopard men, and finally captures his archnemesis the Skull. 'Captain Desmo' (by Ed Winiarski) stumbles across an island where arms smugglers are stockpiling munitions, and blows it up. In 'Radio Squad' (by Jerry Siegel and Chad Grothkopf) Sandy and Larry track down some brutal robbers due to them having placed an unregistered measles sign on their house. 'Lieut. Bob Neal of Sub 662' (by Bob Hirsch and Russ Lehman) investigates some stolen bonds and a faked suicide. It's pretty obvious that the creators have no interest in the naval setting any more. 'Biff Bronson' (by Albert Sulman and Joseph Sulman) helps a man jailed for fur theft clear his name. And 'Sergeant O'Malley of the Red Coat Patrol' (by Jack Lehti) catches a gang that stole a lumberjack payroll.

May 1940: More Fun Comics #57

Cover by Bernard Bailey

'The Spectre' (by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily): Zor is back! The Spectre's arch-nemesis escapes from his imprisonment, and it's not long before the two are engaged in psychic combat, hurling comets at each other. Zor wins, then sets about ruining the Spectre's life by framing his alter ego Jim Corrigan for murder, and recruiting a serial killer to menace Jim's ex-girlfriend. The Spectre is powerless, and as he always does in such a situation, he goes to God for advice. (It's happening a little too often for my liking.) God sends him off to find the mystic Ectobane tree, from which the Spectre fashions a casket to imprison Zor. He hurls the casket into space, rescues his girl, and everybody lives happily ever after. Except for the scientist at the beginning who Zor left trapped for eternity. And come to think of it, Jim never cleared his name of murder, either. But even with these nagging loose ends, this is cracking good fun. I'd be very surprised if this strip wasn't a major influence on Ditko's Doctor Strange work, and that's praise indeed.

'Detective Sergeant Carey and the Royal Lurma Diamond' (by Joe Donohoe): Carey is assigned to transfer a diamond from a ship to an armored car, but is tricked by disguised thieves. Most of this strip is the following car chase, which has some quite poor sequential storytelling. In the end it turns out that Carey's sidekick Sleepy didn't hand over the diamond after all, because: "I didn't trust that purser; he had a beard!" This from a guy with a comb-over and a Hitler moustache?

'Congo Bill' (by Whitney Ellsworth and George Papp): Bill and Professor Kent are heading for civilisation with the priceless relics they stole last issue, but they are ambushed and captured by the Skull. I rather liked the Skull last time, but his credibility goes down a notch here when he's beaten by a chimp. The chimp becomes Bill's new sidekick, christened O'Toole. This is alright. The action scenes are adequate, and there's some banter to liven things up. I've certainly read worse.

'Wild Stallion' (by Alec Mayne): A cowboy saves a wild horse from a precarious cliff, and the horse saves him in return. Then they become bestest buddies forever. Sickening.

'Captain Desmo' (by Ed Winiarski): Desmo decides that he's had a gut-full of the assassins, and goes after the Grand Assassin himself. He ends up captured, but escapes with an implausible bomb made out of playing cards, an iron pipe and some gunpowder. The assassins' castle is conveniently rigged with self-destruct mechanisms, so Desmo simply escapes and blows the whole place to smithereens, killing all of the assassins inside. The ending goes too far out of its way to make things easy for Desmo, and to wrap up the story quickly.

'Radio Squad' (by Jerry Siegel and Chad Grothkopf): Sandy and Larry are pissed off because they're stuck hunting for a stolen baby carriage when they'd rather be after a gang of bank robbers. So of course, it turns out that the bank robbers are the ones who stole the carriage. It's a mediocre story, but the annoyance of the main characters and a good car chase in the middle liven things up.

'Lieut. Bob Neal of Sub 662' (by B. Hirsch and R. Lehman): A soldier convicted of espionage in 1918 seeks revenge by murdering the pilots who testified against him. Part of his plan involves dressing up as an old lady, which again I question the necessity of. Bob stops him. Move along, nothing to see here.

'Biff Bronson' (by Albert Sulman and Joseph Sulman): Dan eats some chicken at 3 am, and has a nightmare about a guy who falls into a coma and is buried alive. Pointless and bizarre.

'Sergeant O'Malley of the Red Coat Patrol' (by Jack Lehti): A murderer escapes town with a captive child, and O'Malley must track him down. Against my natural instincts, this was actually a pretty solid adventure story.

'Doctor Fate' (by Gardner Fox and Howard Sherman): Doctor Fate battles a mystic named Mango, who is killing people with an orb of fire. Between the fiery deaths and some undead legions there's certainly enough going on, but Fate himself is almost too mysterious for his own good. He's very detached and otherworldly, and there really isn't a gateway character to draw me into the strip otherwise.  Even the Spectre has a human alter ego.

May 1940: All-Star Comics #1

Cover by Creig Flessel, Harry Lampert, Jon L. Blummer and Bernard Baily

DC's new quarterly title is a compilation of their most popular strips from More Fun Comics, Adventure Comics, All-American Comics and Flash Comics. Nothing is included from Action Comics or Detective Comics, because the most popular strips from those (Superman and Batman) already have their own quarterly books. So here we get Hawkman, Sandman, Ultra-Man, Flash, Hour-Man, the Spectre, Red White and Blue, and uh... Biff Bronson. I expect that Ultra-Man will be replaced with Green Lantern pretty shortly. Biff Bronson is also an odd choice; I would have thought that Doctor Fate was much more suitable.

'Hawkman' (by Gardner Fox and Sheldon Moldoff): Hawkman is in Wales, where he stumbles across a plot in which a wicked uncle tries to gain the inheritance of his niece and nephew. At least this villain tackles the old tropes in style: he has the nephew ensconced in his castle, where he tortures him, and he's also allied with a witch who can create voodoo zombies. The set-up is all there for some crazy super-hero action. What we get isn't bad, it just zips through everything a little too quickly. Whenever Hawkman is menaced it's for a single panel, and then he's soaring off to the next challenge. Some build-up and resolution to these things would have been great.

I'd also like to illustrate just why a super-hero's civilian job is important to the stories. With someone like Superman, who works as a reporter, there's a built-in excuse for him to know about the latest crimes. Now take Hawkman, who is an antique weapons dealer. Yes, it's flavourful and explains his arsenal of ancient weaponry, but it doesn't help him get involved in stories. In this one he's just flying around Wales for no reason, and stumbles across a girl in trouble.

Also, incest alert!

'The Sandman' (by Gardner Fox and Chad Grothkopf): The Sandman tackles a pair of jewel thieves who are twins. The only notable thing about the story is that these twins give the Sandman a bigger challenge than just about anybody ever has. He gets shot in the shoulder, disarmed of his gas gun, and pistol-whipped, which is more punishment than some Golden Age heroes take in their entire careers.

'Gary Concord, the Ultra-Man' (by Sheldon Mayer and Jon L. Blummer): Now hold on a second. I was under the impression that Gary Concord was basically the supreme leader of the USA, but in this story there's a president. Not only that, but Gary's father had once secured world peace, and Gary himself was dedicated to that ideal as well. But when war breaks out in Europe between Toutonia and Balkania, he says it's not America's problem. Despite these inconsistencies, this is a cracking story. After the war breaks out, things get tough in America, and riots break out. Gary wants to stop the war in Europe, but he's kept busy keeping the peace at home. It all turns out to be the work of a foreign ambassador who is playing both sides in order to get a hold of everybody's uranium mines. The stakes are high, the action is tense, and it's great seeing the hero completely out of his depth.

'The Flash, the Fastest Man Alive' (by Gardner Fox and Everett E. Hibbard): The Flash investigates a murder, and manages to solve it before the policeman present can return to the station to report the crime. In the process, the Flash harasses the police chief so badly that he is deputised, and I assume that he'll be a police officer in future stories. This is a lot of fun, with the Flash zipping from place to place and doing his investigations in a split second before moving on. I wish modern Flash comics could hit as frenetic a pace as this story.

'The Spectre' (by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily): The Spectre is genuinely like nothing else around at the time. In this story he goes up against an arsonist, who ends up being part of an insurance scam. But in his initial investigation, after finding a scrap of cloth in a burned out warehouse, he goes to the afterlife to question the spirit who had once wore the cloth. It's cosmic on a scale that no other Golden Age hero can match. In the end, when he confronts the businessman responsible, he shows him the faces of all those who died in the fires, which causes the businessman to drop dead. And there's no doubt that the Spectre kills him on purpose. This is great stuff.

'Biff Bronson' (by Albert Sulman and Joseph Sulman): Biff takes on a foreign agent with a photographic memory, who is using it to memorise secret plans. "This is getting tedious!" says Biff in one panel, and I can't help but to agree.

'Exile to Jupiter' (by Evelyn Gaines): Earth has been conquered by natives of Mercury. Earthman Dik's girlfriend has been sent to the penal colony on Jupiter, so Dik steals a spaceship, frees the slaves on Jupiter, leads them in a revolt that kills every Mercurian on the planet, then retakes the Earth and kills the Mercurian tyrant. All in two pages. Needless to say, this is terribly underdeveloped. Gaines has plotted a novel and written a synopsis.

'Presenting Tick-Tock Tyler, the Man of the Hour, as the Hour-Man' (by Ken Fitch and Bernard Baily): Hour-Man goes up against an arsonist and real estate agent who wants the deed to a house. It's terribly boring.

'Red, White and Blue' (by Jerry Siegel and William Smith): Red, Whitey and BlooeyBlooey. I'm not sure if it's bad storytelling, or an attempt to build mystery around an ongoing enemy.  I favour the former.

May 1940: More Fun Comics #56

Cover by Howard Sherman

'The Spectre' (by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily): Jim Corrigan, aka the Spectre, must deal with an unscrupulous wholesaler that is threatening a department store, trying to force the store to buy more of its goods. There's never a question that the Spectre might fail, and not a hint of drama. Instead this story provides the catharsis of seeing crooks get what they deserve, usually in a gruesome or morbid fashion.  It's still a good read, though it is lacking in eeriness compared to previous installments.

'Biff Bronson' (by Albert Sulman and Joseph Sulman): Biff picks up the wrong short from the dry cleaners, one with a message written on it as a tip-off to a payroll robbery. He foils the robbery by posing as a Chinese laundryman, in a predictably horrendous fashion. As usual, I can accept it when the villains are racist, but Biff's disguise and fake accent are just terrible.

'Captain Desmo' (by Ed Winiarski): Gabby is captured by the society of Assassins, and Desmo rescues him. This almost certainly breaks the record for grenades thrown in a story up to this point. Even so, it manages to be a bit rubbish.

'Radio Squad' (by Jerry Siegel and Chad Grothkopf): Sandy tackles a married couple who are selling counterfeit fur coats on the street. The premise is a novel one, but it all falls flat in execution.

'Lieut. Bob Neal of Sub 662' (by Bob Hirsch and Russ Lehman): Bob and his sub must protect a huge American oil tanker from attacks by the "belligerent" nations. Another very dull story.

'Memory Test' (by George Shute): A kid helps a circus elephant that has a broken piece of chain sticking into its leg. Later, after an accident in the big top, the elephant saves the kid's mother. I don't know what it is tonight, but this is another terrible story. Perhaps I'm just in a shitty mood.

'Congo Bill' (by Whitney Ellsworth and George Papp): It's the first appearance of Congo Bill, who goes on (in a completely different form) to become one of DC's most long-lived characters.  In the Congo, Bill foils an attempt by the villainous Skull to steal treasures from some ancient ruins. Once again, I couldn't muster up any enthusiasm for this. I'm pretty sure now that this is all the fault of my sleep-deprived brain.

'Detective Sergeant Carey and the Jade Hatchet' (by Joe Donohoe): An old Chinese man is targeted by hatchet men for daring to oppose an opium smuggling operation. Carey protects the old man, and exposes the hatchet man as the mayor of Chinatown. Mayor dude, you need to learn how to delegate.

'Sergeant O'Malley of the Red Coat Patrol' (by Jack Lehti): Mounties and horse thieves. It's like my worst nightmares personified.

'Doctor Fate' (by Gardner Fox and Howard Sherman): After supposedly destroying his foe Wotan last issue, Fate goes to Hell to check if he is actually dead. It turns out that he's still alive, and has a plan to blow up the world. Naturally, Fate stops him. The first half of this story is great, full of references to Elder Gods and eldritch beings, all of which contribute to giving this strip an air of mythic wonder. The second half is more conventional super hero fare, and not nearly as good.

April 1940: More Fun Comics #55

Cover by Bernard Baily

'The Spectre' (by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily): The Spectre is confronted by Zor, a powerful spirit who has been trapped on Earth for centuries, who uses his vast powers to promote evil. The ensuing battle is a cracker, with both combatants growing so large that they fight in outer space. Zor ends up kidnapping the Spectre's old lover and escaping to another dimension, and the Spectre must petition God so that he can track him down. The final confrontation isn't quite so epic, but this is a great story. It's chock full of elements that I always associated with the late 1960s cosmic books, not the Golden Age. And Zor is a very intriguing villain for the time. Siegel is a long way ahead of his contemporaries.

'Biff Bronson' (by Albert Sulman and Joseph Sulman): Dan Druff is framed for stealing some pearls by fake detectives, who then demand hush money from him. Biff dresses as Dan's mother to deliver the money, then beats the hell out of the crooks. Dan and Biff are entirely too into the whole scenario.

'Bob Neal of Sub 662' (by B. Hirsch and Russ Lehman): Foreign saboteurs try to blow up the Panama Canal with a convoluted plan involving a ship loaded with dynamite that is being guided by a radio signal. It's all quite garbled. The plan of the saboteurs isn't revealed until the end, when a hasty infodump informs the reader what's happening and it all gets wrapped up in a couple of panels.

'Brand New Gun' (by Brittin Quigley): The local sheriff has a shoot-out with a killer who is armed with a new-fangled automatic pistol. Predictably, the killer loses because he doesn't know how to work the thing properly. It's quite well told for what it is, and the killer's inability to understand the gun ties well into the idea that he is impeding progress in the town.

'Doctor Fate' (by Gardner Fox and Howard Sherman): Once again I have been surprised by the debut of a DC Universe staple. In this story, the mysterious Wotan tries to kill Doctor Fate, reasoning that he is the only one that can stand in the way of his plans for world conquest. Fate is a strange figure in this story. He's presented very much as a mystery. We learn that he's a master of science and the occult, but very little else. His face is constantly hidden by his rad helmet, and we never learn his true name. It's a shame that the final battle with Wotan descends into fisticuffs, but the rest of the set-up is very intriguing.

'Captain Desmo' (by Ed Winiarski): Desmo and Gabby help a man who is being blackmailed for money by assassins. It's actually quite tedious, which is an achievement for a story with assassins in it.

'Radio Squad' (by Jerry Siegel and Chad Grothkopf): Sandy and Larry must stop a mad scientist from murdering the people he believes stole his invention. The killer is convincingly insane, and makes for a great villain.

'Detective Sergeant Carey in Death Stalks the Campus' (by Joe Donohoe): Carey takes on a mad scientist who is posing as a vampire and killing college students. I have no idea why any of this is happening.

'Sergeant O'Malley of the Red Coat Patrol' (by Jack Lehti): O'Malley goes up against the Wolf Man, a bandit who commands wolves and dresses in their skins. With his combination of overblown villainous dialogue and understated all-grey colour scheme, the Wolf Man is certainly an interesting villain. It's too bad that he has no interesting protagonist to strive against, or this might have been great.

'Bulldog Martin' (by Bart Tumey): A man is framed for the murder of his uncle, in a manner that can best be described as desperately thorough. The sheer volume and precision of the evidence piled up against the kid is ridiculous. The story is hackneyed and obvious, but the true murderer's frame job was amusing to me.

February 1940: More Fun Comics #54

Cover by Bernard Baily

That is a seriously great cover.  It's probably the first Golden Age cover that I really love.

'The Spectre' (by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily): The Spectre takes on a phony psychic, who has been fleecing the mother of the Spectre's former fiancee. This was all quite uninteresting, until the scene where the Spectre is summoned back to Heaven and offered a choice between eternal rest, or fighting evil on Earth as a ghost forever. With his fiancee's life in danger he chooses to remain Earth-bound. It's a great moment trapped in an otherwise mediocre story.

'Biff Bronson' (by Al Sulman and Joseph Sulman): Biff and Dan take on the Wizard and his robot army, which is nowhere near as exciting as it sounds. It mostly involves them running away while the robots' batteries run out.

'Captain Desmo' (by Ed Winiarski): Desmo and Gabby anger a group of assassins in India, and must beat them before they are killed. Which they do in a straightforward manner that elicits no excitement.

'Radio Squad' (by Jerry Siegel and Chad Grothkopf): Sandy and Larry must guard a wealthy man who is being targeted by "The Cloak", a mysterious killer who ends up being the wealthy man himself. The first part of the Cloak's plan makes perfect sense, but I can't see exactly what he was trying to achieve after that.

'Lieut. Bob Neal of Sub 662' (by B. Hirsch and Russ Lehman): A female spy after the US defense plans? Seen it. A spy ring with a ray that can stop a plane's engine? Seen it. Story with no original elements, told in a boring fashion? Definitely seen it.

'A Wet Wager' (by Paul Dean): A seaman makes a bet that he can stay underwater longer than his friend, but must be rescued when his oxygen line is cut. I'm almost certain that this is a reprint from an earlier comic.

'King Carter' (by Paul J. Lauretta): King and Red are stranded by pirates on a tropical island. Red befriends a tribe of apes that helps them defeat the pirates. There's a certain absurd charm of it all.

'Detective Sergeant Carey and the Policy Murders' (by Joe Donohoe): Carey and Sleepy track down the killers of a wealthy old recluse. It's all to do with an insurance scam, which is as worn out a motivation as there is.

'Sergeant O'Malley of the Red Coat Patrol' (by Jack Lehti): O'Malley takes on a gang of crooks that is trying to steal a mine from an old prospector. Predictably, dynamite is the answer to all of their problems.

'Bulldog Martin' (by Bart Tumey): Bulldog Martin uses an invisibility pill to wreak havoc on some crooks who are trying to make a transaction. In the course of setting the crooks against each other, he scatters eleven million dollars into the crowd below. Thus the day is saved, and the economy is ruined, by Bulldog Martin!

February 1940: More Fun Comics #53, Detective Comics #37

Cover by Bernard Baily

I wasn't able to find a copy of this, aside from a reprint of the Spectre story, so that's all I can write about. 

'The Spectre' (by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily): Continuing from last issue, Jim Corrigan has returned from the dead to battle crime with his supernatural powers. In this story he must rescue his fiancee from the crooks who killed him. This is fantastically eerie stuff. Jim kills one of the crooks just by looking at him, and makes another's flesh fall away from his skeleton with a touch. And even though the crooks are dealt with easily, Jim is still little more than a ghost, and must leave his fiancee forever. This is very good stuff, spooky and tragic. The art lets it down here and there, but overall it's still effective.

Cover by Bob Kane

'Batman' (by Bill Finger and Bob Kane): Batman goes up against foreign agents in this story, which never quite feels right. From the opening where Batman has gotten lost while driving around, to the numerous instances if him being bashed on the head from behind, he doesn't feel like the same character. And I feel like the tone has shifted from what has come before, in a way that I can't quite pinpoint. It's not a terrible story by any means, but there's something off about it that I can't quite put my finger on.

'Spy' (by Jerry Siegel and Maurice Kashuba): Bart takes on Ligoni, leader of the "Ring of Death", who has just bombed some government officials. This is a solid story of Bart going undercover, even though it doesn't stray from the usual formula.  It's a solid rendition of a familiar routine.

'Cosmo, the Phantom of Disguise' (by Sven Elven): Cosmo must stop a plot to hijack a  ship en route to England and sell it to an enemy nation. Part of his plan involves faking an explosion so that the ship will be evacuated, but I'm still wondering how that was done without crippling the ship as well. The story itself certainly has no explanation for me.

'The Crimson Avenger' (possibly by Jim Chambers and Harry Lucey): The Crimson Avenger is back, after a lengthy absence.  He hasn't been seen since Detective Comics #29! Very little effort is made to reintroduce the character, but I don't think it would be too hard to pick things up. In this story he tackles some kidnappers, which is a fairly dull starting point. Their ringleader ends up being a guy named J.N. Worthy, which seems fair enough, except for the scene where he seems surprised to be getting a note from the kidnappers. There's no reason he'd do so while alone in his own office.  It's just a cheap ploy to obscure the identity of the villain.

'Murder at Sea' (by John Randall): In this prose story, a professor is murdered and his secret plans are stolen. A boy named Billy figures out that the steward did it; his alibi was that he was writing a note at the time of the murder, but the note is too neat to have been written on the ship. It's just clever enough to work, but it's in the much-loathed "kids stop crooks" category, which is something I really hate.

'Speed Saunders, Ace Investigator and the Crime Roundup' (by Gardner Fox and Fred Guardineer): Speed is framed by crooks as a drunk, doused with whiskey and thrown in an alley. He's quickly demoted, but sets about getting his job back by starting a one-man war on crime. Normally I'm a sucker for this kind of thing, one guy just going around town and busting up every crook he finds, from the lowest to the highest. But this one just wraps up too neatly. It's the sort of story that works really well when it's drawn out and the crooks get their chance to retaliate, but here they just get rounded up, put on trial and sent to jail.

'Steve Malone, District Attorney' (by Don Lynch): This is a stock standard story about a kidnapping plot, where Steve goes to the rescue and saves the day, ticking all the cliche boxes as he goes. But there's an actual rape attempt by one of the kidnappers on their victim, which is definitely something that hasn't been done in DC comics to this point. It's all pretty PG in the way it's presented, but the intent is obvious. There's something to be said for this as a nod to realism, but it's not something I want to see in every story from now on.

'Cliff Crosby' (by Chad Grothkopf): This is a new strip. Cliff Crosby is friends with a reporter, and to be honest I'm not sure what it is that Cliff does. In this story, he and his friend get a lead on a missing judge, and find that he is being sold by a slave ring in South America. Cliff gets captured himself, saves the judge when he is thrown to a giant octopus, then wears the octopus on his head to frighten the slavers. It's not good, and the art is some of the worst I've seen. There are good panels here and there, but in every fight scene the perspective and scale are completely off. And Crosby has the world's tiniest arms.

'Slam Bradley' (by Jerry Siegel and Mart Bailey): Slam and Shorty are left a horse named Dynamite in a wealthy man's will, and before too long they have it racing in the Kentucky Derby. The usual shenanigans ensue, with crooked gamblers taking an interest, and of course Shorty ends up having to ride the horse in the derby. The plot elements here are as hackneyed as any other horse racing story, but the difference is in the presentation. Slam Bradley's stories are always laced with a knowing humour that raises them above the pack.

January 1940: More Fun Comics #52

Cover by Bernard Baily

'The Spectre' (by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Baily): Jim Corrigan is a policeman, and also engaged to socialite Clarice Winston. After Jim single-handedly stops a gang of crooks from robbing a warehouse, gangster Gat Benson decides to bump him off. Which he successfully does, by putting him in a barrel, filling it with cement, and dropping into a river. Corrigan dies, but before he can enter Heaven a booming voice tells him that it is his mission to return to Earth and eradicate crime. Corrigan awakens at the bottom of the river, finding that he is a ghostly apparition with the ability to fly and turn invisible. The story ends with him about to take revenge on Gat and his thugs.

This is quality stuff.  Siegel is really on his game here, drawing out the origin story into a compelling read. If I have one disappointment it's that it ends before Corrigan can assume the look he has on the cover of the issue. It's a minor quibble. The characters are relatively well-defined, Baily's storytelling is strong, and I want to see where it's going.

'Wing Brady' (by Tom Hickey): Continuing from last issue, Wing Brady and his men are defending Fort Miranda from an Arab tribe known as the Touaregs. Wing uses some rudimentary tactics to defeat them, but the story is well told. If I have one complaint it's that the Touaregs are never developed as characters. Faceless hordes usually make for uninteresting villains.

'Biff Bronson' (by Albert Sulman and Joseph Sulman): A mad scientist known as the Wizard has built a robot army, and he uses it to steal all of the silver from West Point. It probably cost him more to build the robots, but never mind that. Biff Bronson disables a robot, figures out that he can use it as a disguise, and determines to infiltrate the Wizard's hideout. To be continued! This is fun stuff.

'Radio Squad' (by Jerry Siegel and Martin Wheeler): Sandy and Larry go up against a safe manufacturer who has rigged his safes with secret panels that conceal the treasure placed within. He then plans to buy back the seemingly looted safes and collect the treasure himself. This starts off as an intriguing mystery, but the payoff is not as interesting as the set-up.

'Bust-Up in Borneo' (by Jack Anthony): Two adventurers rescue a young boy from savages by using flares. It's not awful. It just kind of exists.

'Lieut. Bob Neal of Sub 662' (by B. Hirsch and Russ Lehman): Bob and Tubby go up against a disguised yacht that is laying mines in the Panama Canal. This is solid if unspectacular stuff. It's continued next month, even though the story seems to be over. Perhaps whatever foreign power is responsible for the plot will retaliate.

'King Carter' (by Paul J. Lauretta): King and Red are in the Arctic, searching for a lost research expedition. It turns out that the expedition was killed by a rival outfit, who wanted the reward money for scientific data about the Arctic for themselves. This story is okay, but marred by some terrible exposition near the beginning, as King and Red spend a page telling each other things they already know.

'Detective Sergeant Carey and the Studio Mystery' (by Joe Donohoe): Carey investigates a murder on a movie set, in which an actor was shot while filming a scene but nobody can find the gun. The culprit turns out to be a cameraman, who killed the actor with a gun inside the camera. This story doesn't do anything particularly wrong, but it's still not very good.

'Sergeant O'Malley of the Red Coat Patrol' (by Jack Lehti): O'Malley goes up against a gang of robbers who have their hideout in a secret room behind the local bank. I was convinced they were living behind a waterfall, and was all set to write about how stupid O'Malley was for not figuring it out on the first panel. That's some effective misdirection from Lehti, the best thing about an otherwise mediocre story.

'Bulldog Martin' (by Bart Tumey): Bulldog is left a bottle of invisibility pills by a deceased scientist, and uses it to break up a gang of union racketeers. There are some decent comedy bits in this story that give some life to the very well worn plot. And I'm glad that this strip now has a hook of some sort, even if it's not a particularly original one.