Number 560


Battlin' Captain Battle!


Captain Battle has a pretty good gimmick, his Luceflyers, which strap to his back and despite being the size of beer cans fly him all the way across the Pacific to China. I don't know what happened to the technology of the Luceflyers, but we could use it nowadays.

When in China Captain Battle fights Japanese, then gets mistaken for a Japanese spy by the Chinese. They put him up against a wall for instant execution. It's a good thing it all turns out well. Captain Battle even gets to meet Generalissimo Mao Tung (sic). Do they mean Mao Tse Tung, Chairman Mao, who gave Western governments fits for decades? We'd use any ally during wartime, which makes for strange bedfellows.

"Savior of Chunking," an action-packed 16-pager, is from Captain Battle #5, the last issue, dated Summer 1943, which reprints Captain Battle #1 from 1941. According to the Grand Comics Database the story is drawn by Lloyd Jacquet's Funnies Inc. shop, with George Mandel as principal artist. I showed you a Captain Battle story from this same issue in Pappy's #346.

More about →

Number 508


Blackout


I usually don't get into origins of superheroes because they can be so silly. Consider some of the chemical accidents that happen to turn those guys into superheroes...or nuclear explosions...or gifts from alien beings. Might as well say a magic word like "Shazam," because it makes as much sense.

Dr. Basil Brusiloff of Belgrade, Yugoslavia, is in on one of those big explosions, in this case working in his lab when the Nazis bomb the place. It turns him into a hairy ebony black guy who can fly. We can even see his hairy bum in the last panel, so is he wearing pants? It's probably no wonder that he only showed up in Captain Battle #1 in 1941, #3, and #5, and #5 was a reprint of #1. The scans for this story come from that reprint issue, dated Summer 1943. Artist Don Rico signed the strip in the last panel.

Blackout was created for Charles Biro and Bob Wood by George Roussos, because Roussos was an assistant to Bob Kane on Batman, and Biro wanted a bit of the Bat magic to rub off. At the same time, Jerry Robinson, another Kane assistant, created London for them. Blackout never hit the big time. Maybe it was the hairy bum. Even in the superhero world where logic does not rule Blackout seems more odd than most.

More about →

Number 346

"...through the sewer like a cannonball!"

Captain Battle came to us, eyepatch and all, by way of Lloyd Jacquet's Funnies, Inc., a shop that provided comic book stories and art, pre-packaged for publishers. Lots of folks were jumping into the field in the time right before World War II, and Lev Gleason used the Funnies, Inc. shop for his books. Captain Battle, the comic book, not the character, had a confusing history: the first series in 1941 had issues #1 and #2, then became Boy Comics with #3. There was a Captain Battle #3 in Winter 1942-43, then #4 and finally #5 in 1943 which reprinted the contents of #1. Number 5 is where I got the scans for this story.

To add to the confusion, there were also two issues of Captain Battle Jr. I guess they figured if it worked for Captain Marvel, it'd work for them.

Frank Borth, who had a long, long career in comics, supplied the artwork, although because of the shop production, could have other artists' hands in it. It's a fairly typical kick-the-Nazis-butts-type story, with our hero triumphing over the bad guys by using good ol' American smarts and ingenuity. I especially like the "Lucetubes" rockets...borrowed from Buck Rogers?

And speaking of borrowing, the scene of the Nazi officers in the nightclub and the singer doing "The Marseillaise" is "borrowed" from the movie, Casablanca.

More about →