Number 1379: Ace of Space, meet Space Ace

With a comment in Pappy's #1346, reader Darci sent me on a hunt for the character, Ace of Space. Ace Egan is considered to be a precursor to Hal Jordan, the Silver Age Green Lantern. The story is from Feature Comics #38 (1940), and crams a lot into an origin story, but whether it inspired editor Julius Schwartz or writer John Broome, who knows? It’s an interesting thought. The writing on this five-page origin story is clumsy, especially as Ace discovers his powers. After putting on the power belt bequeathed him by the dying alien he says, “I seem to know the answer to all problems!” Despite growing to be nine-feet tall, jumping a quarter mile or having super vision, I’d think just having answers to all problems would be power enough. Harry Francis Campbell did the artwork, and H. Weston Taylor the writing.

I’ve included the Space Ace story by Gardner Fox and Fred Guardineer from Manhunt #4 (1948). Here Space Ace is Jet Black, a “space patrolman” (space would be a mighty big patrol area). The Space Ace character from the four issues of Jet (Jet Powers, not Jet Black) a couple of years later, also published by ME, is more of a pirate.

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Number 460


Journeyman


I know you guys are here to read comics and not get preached to, but bear with me. Here's a PSA, a Pappy Service Announcement:

Last week I was diagnosed with prostate cancer. I don't want sympathy. It's a curable form of cancer, and because of my astute primary care physician and my habit of going to my doctor once a year, it was caught at an early stage. So while I have cancer right now, there's no reason to believe I will have it after my surgery in a couple of weeks, or that it will be what ultimately kills me. Here's my preaching, though: Because this blog is read mostly by males, I am advising if you are over 40 you have your prostate examined once a year. Most guys don't like the idea of a Digital Rectal Exam (DRE), but for a couple of seconds of inconvenience and indignity, your life may be saved.

So, now that I've had my say, we return to our regularly scheduled program...


Vern Henkel's artwork might not have been splashy, might have been derivative--in "The Man Who Made A Wish" the devil looks like he's swiped from Will Eisner--but the Golden Age of comics wouldn't have happened without artists like Henkel. They were the guys who weren't stars, who did all of the backup stuff, kept the comic book machine running.

Henkel, who was born in 1917, sent a comic book story unsolicited to Quality Comics publisher Everett "Busy" Arnold in the 1930s. Arnold accepted it and Henkel's comic book career began, right around the time the comic book industry began. Over the years there were dozens, maybe hundreds, of guys like Henkel, who were the journeymen of the business.

"The Man Who Made a Wish" is originally from Mystic #7, 1952, but scanned from the reprint in Marvel's 1974 Crypt of Shadows #8. "Captain Fortune" is from Feature Comics #26, November 1939.

I posted a crime story by Henkel in Pappy's #132.

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Number 388


Give Doll Man a great big hand!


From Feature Comics #107, February 1947, Doll Man encounters the sound of one hand murdering. "The Hand of Horror" is drawn by John Cassone(?) according to the Grand Comics Database. I don't know the other work of Cassone so I'm unable to judge whether it's by him or not.

Doll Man starred in Feature Comics for a long time, as well as appearing in his own book. I think the appeal to young readers is the tiny in the world of the oversized; The Incredible Shrinking Man or Land of the Giants stuff that fascinates kids. Otherwise Doll Man is kind of a dull man as a super hero. He's got one power, to shrink. Of course, that whole concept was lifted by DC for the Silver Age Atom. Darrell Dane, Doll Man, is a scientist, one of the few good ones in comics. The scientist-villain in "The Hand of Horror" is like most comic book scientists, evil and mad. I wonder how we made so much scientific progress in the 20th Century with all of those evil, mad scientists wreaking havoc?

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