CHB’s NEW COMIC STRIP THREAD
CoolHandBond
Mactan IslandPosts: 7,280MI6 Agent
Not sure why but I don’t seem to be able to post on the old thread so have opened up a new one.
WARNING - CONTENT NOTICE
The content of this comic strip contains very strong language not permitted in the ongoing threads of this site. It also contains themes that some readers may find upsetting. Reader discretion is advised for those who may be easily offended. The content has been cleared for posting by the moderators.
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THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH - Deviation Five - Free Love - Part Two
The Department Of Truth continues next Thursday.
Yeah, well, sometimes nothin' can be a real cool hand.
Comments
Each question just begets more questions; there are no answers.
The strands do start to come together…in time…
Weird how you couldn’t carry on in the original thread…what have we all been thinking…? 😵💫🫠
"Carry On" is a good choice of words .....
Very mysterious…or maybe not…or have I had a visit from the MIB? 🤐
CONTENT ADVICE: Reader discretion is advised for those who may be easily offended.
DANGER GIRL (1998) Part Fifteen
Concluded tomorrow…
I’m enjoying every ridiculous moment of this 😁
CONTENT ADVICE: Reader discretion is advised for those who may be easily offended.
DANGER GIRL (1998) Part Sixteen
Danger Girl returned for many more adventures, but next week we begin something completely different…and it’s not Monty Python.
Thoroughly enjoyable, thanks 😁
VICTOR DRAGO Part 2
Continues next Monday…
I like the style, very moody and noir.
MORE FUN COMICS #73
A scarce, highly desired issue, as it features the debuts of two Golden Age superheroes - Green Arrow and Aquaman. @caractacus potts will provide detail about Green Arrow (he has already covered Aquaman on the old thread).
Green Arrow today, Aquaman tomorrow.
Can I be greedy wondering what of Dr Fate?
Green Arrow created by writer Mort Weisenger and artist George Papp. Weisenger also created Aquaman in the same issue of More Fun 73, Nov 1941, and would go on to be the editor of all the Superman comics in the 50s and 60s.
I think Green Arrows face is quite distinct in this first story, and he does not look like that in future stories. who does he resemble? spencer Tracy maybe? I'm sure that face is modelled off someone.
Aquaman was derivative of Timely(Marvel)'s SubMariner, and Green Arrow was derivative of Batman. The millionaire playboy and his teen ward, dressing up in costumes where their eyes showed as white slits. They had an ArrowCar, ArrowPlane, and ArrowCave, responded to an ArrowSignal, and all those trick arrows (boxing glove arrows, suction cup arrows, bright light arrows, loud noise arrows, stinky gas arrows, etc etc) were analogous to the bag of tricks hidden in Batmans utility belt.
though a backup feature in his first appearance, Green Arrow proved popular, and was the cover feature for most issues of More Fun from issue 77 (march 1942) to issue 101 (feb 1945)
the origin of Green Arrow and Speedy would be revealed over a year later in More Fun 89, March 1943 "The Birth of the Battling Bowmen", art Cliff Young.
in this origin story, we learn Roy Harper (Speedy) had been orphaned and raised by a native american on the remote Lost Mesa, learning to hunt by bow and arrow.
elsewhere, Oliver Queen (Green Arrow) was a museum director who had also mastered native ways. After his collection of artifacts is destroyed by criminals, he coincidentally travels to Lost Mesa to resume archaeological work, and is pursued there by the same crooks, who believe he will lead him to hidden riches.
the two independently trained archers meet when the criminals arrive, and the two are pursued into the caves where they discover a hidden chamber full of priceless golden artifacts
then Oliver invents his first trick arrow to defeat the bad guys, and the two new friends vow to use their archery skills to fight crime
Green Arrow and Speedy also appeared as a backup feature in Worlds Finest Comics well into the 1960s, and in Leading Comics, where they were members of the Seven Soldiers of Victory from 1942-1945. The Seven Soldiers were DC's b-grade superhero team of the Golden Age, the superheros not good enough to be in the Justice Society of America. The other five members were Crimson Avenger, the Vigilante, the Shining Knight, and Star Spangled Kid and Stripesy.
in 1946, More Fun's contents changed to humour strips more fitting its name, and all the superhero series (Superboy, Green Arrow, Aquaman, and Johnny Quick) were transferred to Adventure Comics, When DC cancelled most of its superhero titles around 1950, due to changing tastes, Adventure comics survived because it was Superboys comic, and Green Arrow and Aquaman survived because they were Superboy's backup features. This carried them straight through to the superhero revival of the Silver Age
in 1958, Jack Kirby was working briefly for DC again, until some legal disagreements drove him to leave (and return to Marvel where he and Stan Lee would create the Marvel Age of comics as we know it). While at DC, Green Arrow was one of his assignments, for about one year, and he gave the series a more science fictional tone, During this run, he and writer France E. Herron gave green Arrow a brand new, completely different origin story, with more of a Robinson Crusoe twist. Adventure 256, Jan 1959 "The Green Arrow's First Case"
here we learn how Oliver Queen was shipwrecked and had to teach himself survival skills
and developed his arsenal of trick arrows to solve a variety of island life problems
he creates his basic costume for camouflage purposes. then when he spots a passing boat, he swims to it only to interrupt a mutiny in progress, his first triumph over crime!
the only problem with this version of the origin, is it does not explain where Speedy came from. but in the first version, Speedy was a bit too dominant, with Green Arrow a latecomer on Lost Mesa with less authentic knowledge of archery than his kid sidekick. This Jack Kirby origin, with variations, has been the official origin ever since, and was the basis of the Arrow tv series from a years back.
Here's something you'll want to see. for two or three stories, Green Arrow and Speedy were joined by an uninvited female partner, Miss Arrowette. who of course is persuaded to leave crimefighting to the men, and go home and bake cookies or whatever unwanted female partners were supposed to do instead in this era. Unlike Batwoman, Miss Arrowette does not eventually gain Green Arrows approval, and quickly disappears from the series. first appearance Worlds Finest 113, nov 1961, art by Lee Elias. note the hairnet arrow; like BatWoman, Miss Arrowette is using girl-themed gadgets.
...and now, the exciting conclusion...
Green Arrow joins the Justice League of America in issue 4, May 1961
and Speedy joins the Teen Titans in issue 4, Aug 1966, with a nearly identical cover composition
then in sept 1969, Green Arrow is completely reinvented, in a teamup story with Batman in Brave and the Bold 85, written by Bob Haney, art by hot new artist Neal Adams. Oliver Queen has lost his fortune, and now has an attitude and dresses more like Robin Hood. This is the version of Green Arrow I knew as a kid, and pretty much how he still looks today.
this story was almost immediately followed up by a highly regarded series of appearances in Green Lantern's comic, now retitled Green Lantern/Green Arrow. also drawn by Neal Adams, and written by Denny O'Neil. This was during a period in which DC was trying to update its image with "relevant" comics, tackling the issues of the day of interest to young folks. Beginning with Green Lantern/Green Arrow 76, april 1970.
Green Lantern tries to stop a riot in a black neighbourhood, only to be interrupted by Green Arrow, informing him he's fighting the wrong side. The "rioters" are desperately poor people being exploited by their slumlord, who is the real enemy here.
leading to this classic page
Green Lantern is the square establishment superhero, representing the narrow morals of the silver age formula DC is trying to leave behind. Green Arrow is now the leftist radical hippy superhero, representing the "relevant" direction DC is trying to go in. and who over the next several issues teaches Green Lantern how wrong he's been about everything. at the story's end, the two characters decide to rent a car and go on a road trip across America, where they learn about real world issues of racism, misogyny, pollution, and the drug problem
Green Arrows old school teen sidekick seems to have long since disappeared, no longer "relevant" to this version of the character, but dramatically reappears in Green Lantern/Green Arrow 85, sept 1971, where it turns out the smug radical version of Green Arrow doesnt know everything: he's missed that Speedy is now a heroin addict!
This run of Green Lantern/Green Arrow was critically acclaimed, but did not sell well and was canceled shortly after.
Of course you can…
Thanks, CHB!
So.... Who is the villain?
That's right!
That’s a brilliant routine 🤣
Thank you @caractacus potts and @Barbel
MORE FUN COMICS #73 - AQUAMAN 1st Appearance
And tomorrow we return to The Department Of Truth in an unmissable 2-parter…
I already posted supplemental nots on the topic of Aquaman yonder , no need to repeat myself.
How bout instead I post supplemental notes on the topic of More Fun Comics. Action and Detective are still published today, and Adventure lasted into the 1980s, but some might never have heard of More Fun, To explain what More Fun is, is to reveal the Secret Origin of DC comics itself
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the American comic book began in July 1934, with Famous Funnies 1. Thered been various earlier prototypes over the years, in all shapes and sizes, either oneshots or very shortlived series. Famous Funnies was 64 pages, made of newsprint sheets folded three times and trimmed with a glossy cover, and was published monthly until 1955. This was to be standard comic book format until page count and trim size began to be reduced due to inflation. The contents were sunday newspaper comics section pages, scaled down. The comic was conceived, edited and marketed by M C Gaines, who would later work with DC in the early 1940s, then go on to launch EC Comics.
as it is in the public domain, the entire contents of can be viewed or downloaded here from the Digital Comics Museum.
as an example of what the contents consisted of, here is Mutt and Jeff, the most popular of all newspaper comics in the early years of the 20th century. There were a couple dozen other different popular newspaper comics alongside, Toonerville Folks, Connie, S'Matter Pop, the Bungle Family, and many others. As these were Sunday pages scaled down, each story was exactly one page, and there were multiple episodes for each strip scattered throughout the issue
as Famous Funnies was successful, other publishers quickly competed, filling their rival comic books with whatever newspaper sunday pages remained available.
less than a year later, in Feb 1935, a man named Major Malcolm Wheeler Nicholson published the first comic book with all original material. Nicholson was a self described international adventurer, and contributor to the pulps, and his new company was called National Allied Publications. (the legal name of DC through to the 1960s was National Comics, then it changed to National Periodical Publications)
As there were no further actual newspaper strips to reprint, Nicholson published rejected newspaper strips and imitation newspaper sunday pages. The same basic format as Famous Funnies, except in black and white, with each story one page long with typical sunday page style logo. His new comic was called New Fun, "new" to make a virtue of the fact nobody had ever heard of these comics before. The front page itself was a complete episode of the cowboy strip Jack Woods by Lyman Matthew Anderson
and as an example of the interior content, the lead story for the first several issues was Sandra of the Secret Service, by Charles Flanders. A spy series with a female lead!
and here you can see the flaw in this format. You have to wait a month to read the second page! I wanna know what happens next!
New Fun 6 oct 1935 included the first published work of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman. They contributed two one page series, period piece Henri Duval and Dr Occult the ghost detective.
the next month, New Fun was retitled More Fun, and Nicholson began a second title simply called New Comics (cover by editor Vin Sullivan)
Nicholson was floundering a bit trying to find a formula that would succeed, and New comics and More Fun now emphasized the humour strips more. New did feature more Siegel and Shuster, this time a police series initially similar to Dick Tracy called Federal Men, that quickly veered into science fiction, this example from issue 20, Oct 1937. Adventure stories like this were now four pages.
As Nicholson continued to experiment, New was retitled New Adventure, then simply Adventure.
Nicholson fell into debt, and took on his distributor as a co-owner. The distributor was Independent News Company, owned by Harry Donenfeld, also a pulp publisher best known for the Spicy Tales line. These were as close to pornography as you could get in the 1930s, and Donenfeld was starting to get in trouble with local authorities, so sought a way to diversify his interests.
Donenfeld, his accountant Jack Leibowitz and Nicholson were now the owners of National Allied, and they launched a third title: Detective Comics, beginning March 1937.
Often described as the first comic anthology with a theme, the stories were slightly longer, featuring a variety of hardboiled detectives, mostly fighting sinister Orientals. Siegel and Shuster again contributed two stories: Bart Regan Spy, and Slam Bradley.
I believe this Slam Bradley page might be the first ever full page splash panel. and I better say, that these comics reflect the attitudes of an earlier era and do not reflect the views and policies of ajb007.
Nicholson continued to owe money to his new partners, so one day when he was out of the country, Donenfeld and Leibowitz seized his assets and locked the door to his office, and Nicholson was out of the company he started. He narrowly missed out on the publication of Action Comics 1 a year later, and it was his impatient partners who got rich quick, not him.
At this point, More fun, Adventure, Detective and Action were all emphasising longer adventure stories rather than short humour strips, and once the success of superman became apparent, the other three titles also tried to find superheros for their cover features. or more precisely, masked mystery men at first.
Detective first tried a character called the Crimson Avenger, beginning with the 20th issue, before introducing Batman. he was the Green Hornet in all but name, a newspaper publisher turned vigilante with an asian chauffeur as his assistant.
Adventure introduced the Sandman with its 40th issue, july 1939
and whoops, I've covered the Secret Origin of DC Comics, but not actually mentioned More Fun, the comic I promised to tell you about! This post shall have...
...to be continued!
More Fun got its first superhero lead feature in issue 52, Feb 1940. The Spectre, created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Bernard Bailey.
Following the success of Superman, Joe Shuster was stretched thin drawing all the needed product, and handed over Slam Bradley and other earlier series to other artists. but Siegel still had time and ideas, and created a few new series, The Spectre being the most successful of these.
Not so much a superhero, as a one corpse agent of Old Testament justice, retribution and wrath. Lets take a looks at The Spectre's origin, shall we?
Jim Corrigan is a police detective, on the way to his own wedding, when he and his fiance are captured by some criminals. they konk Corrigan, then sink him in the river in a barrel of cement.
but instead of dying, he rises through the light to meet an unseen voice, who tells Corrigan he still has work to do on earth, and shall continue his battle with supernatural powers until all crime is gone
upon returning to earth, and dispatching with his own murderers in the next issue, he breaks off his engagement, because he doesnt want the woman he loves sleeping with a corpse
yeh he does stuff like this. The Spectre doesnt capture bad guys neatly and deliver them to the police station, nor even fight them til they die in an accident of their own making. He enacts horrifying transformations on his victims, leaving them in a state from which they can never recover if not die immediately from the effect.
Lets see some pages from his story in All Star 1, a story that really exemplifies his unique approach to crimefighting
...and now, the exciting conclusion
in More Fun 55 May 1940 , The Spectre was joined by a second superhero, Dr Fate, created by writer Gardner Fox (who we've met before) and artist Howard Sherman. Dr Fate was a mysterious occult character, with a long opaque golden facemask, and his headquarters in a remote tower with no doors and windows. His adventures typically involved fish-headed humanoids from beneath the sea, or weird squid like beasts from other dimensions. Early adventures owed a lot to H P Lovecraft.
here he is on the cover of issue 56, his first cover appearance
Dr Fte would be regular cover feature from issue 68 through 76
and a page from issue 65, versus those fishheaded creatures I mentioned
Spectre and Dr Fate were both founding members of the Justice Society f America, and in All Star 3 he explains a bit about himself. this gives a good taste of the early Dr Fate vibe. We see here both his lady friend Inza, and the doorless tower in which he resides.
a few pages later, that squidlike critter I mentioned
at least one witty comics historian has pointed out the two superheros in More Fun werent really that much fun were they? theyre both rather dark and disturbing. but in the early days of superhero comics, the superhero wasnt well defined and there were a lot of wacky variations. Within a year or two, the concept narrowed, and once unique characters became more formulaic. Crimson Avenger and sandman, seen above, traded their floppy suits for skintight costumes and Sandman even acquired the ubiquitous kid sidekick.
we can see what happened to Dr Fate a few posts above: his helmet shrank to reveal his face, and he was retitled the "two fisted' Dr Fate, punching out bank robbers like any other interchangeable supercharacter. And the Spectre gained a comic relief sidekick, Percival Popp the Supercop, an incompetent detective requiring his invisible ghost friend to help him solve cases for him
dont worry, when DC revived these two characters in the 1960s they were restored to their original concepts
Mort Weisenger introduced three new more conventional superhero characters to More Fun in 1941. Green Arrow and Aquaman we've met above. Green Arrow would be regular cover feature from issue 77 through 101. Johnny Quick was the third, staring issue 71, sept 1941. a variation on The Flash, with better artwork and more imaginative use of the superspeed concept. Heres a sample page from issue 101, art by Mort Meskin. (I'd post more about Johnny Quick, but its past my bedtime and I'm getting sleepy. His stories were actually really good and deserve more attention)
More Fun 101 Feb 1945 introduced Superboy, the adventures of Superman when he was a boy. I think this is the first detailed depiction of Krypton within the comic books. This first Superman spinoff actually led to the lawsuit which got Siegel and Shuster fired.
after issue 107, all the superhero stories moved from More Fun to Adventure, and More Fun became a humour anthology instead of a superhero anthology, certainly more befitting its name. More Fun continued in this vein til issue 127, dec 1947. DC's first title ever became the first of DC's anthology titles to be cancelled as the market changed following the end of the war.
Wow, thanks to both of you. A lot of stuff there I hadn't known, plus a lot of reading.
@caractacus potts Thank you once again for your posts, they contain an astonishing amount of detail, I’m truly grateful for your input 🍸
barbel said: ...plus a lot of reading.
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yes I know, too many words, not enough pictures. and I still have to go back and clean up my typos
Heres a reward for enduring my overlong history lesson.
Before Harry Donenfeld bought out National Allied Publications from Nicholson (the company soon to be kown as DC), Donenfeld was publisher of the Spicy line of pulp magazines, pulps with a certain reputation. And there were some comics content in those pulps! DC has never reprinted these for some unimaginable reason, I mean think of the historic importance!
here is an example: Sally the Sleuth. all her adventures were two pages long. Mysteries solved very quickly, but never without a wardrobe malfuntion, and sometimes some bondage. note Barbel you had asked about kid sidekicks, and Sally has a kid sidekick named Peanuts who helps save her from the situations she gets in while solving mysteries!
her first appearance, from Spicy Detective, Nov 1934. a certain argument could be made that this is the first DC comics!
and another exciting adventure from Spicy detective, investigating the White Slave Trade, not sure of the date but probably mid30s
and Stan Lee says he could never empathise with the kid sidekicks! obviously he never read Sally the Sleuth
My apologies for being unclear, caractacus, when I said "a lot of reading" that was not a complaint. I'm happy to have made the acquaintance of Sally and I'm sure Sir Miles will be even more so.
Well, I’m with you…too much reading and not enough pictures 🤭
WARNING - CONTENT NOTICE
The content of this comic strip contains very strong language not permitted in the ongoing threads of this site. It also contains themes that some readers may find upsetting. Reader discretion is advised for those who may be easily offended. The content has been cleared for posting by the moderators.
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THE DEPARTMENT OF TRUTH - Untitled Segment Part One
More tomorrow…this is tremendous stuff - even if I say it myself.
I agree, CHB. I'd been waiting for Kubrick "faking the moon landing" to come up.