Number 1241: Eisner pre-war and postwar

This is the second of four postings this week with features from Quality Comics.

Will Eisner was one of the more accomplished artists in the comic book field, even from his very early days in the industry. And he joined the industry before it was an industry.

He had a distinctive style before World War II, and it grew into the style we all know and admire from after the war. (He also had several people helping him, but the overall look of his work is consistent with his layouts and inking.)

“Espionage Starring Black X” was a strip from early issues of Smash Comics. This episode is from #12 (1940). The Spirit story, reprinted in a 1950 issue of Police Comics, #100, originally appeared in the newspaper comic book section Eisner produced, dated April 28, 1946. “Black X,” who always wore a monocle (even when covering his face, as he does in this story), is a type of pre-war spy story where spies were gentlemen, and agents had numbers instead of names. The Spirit story is one of the types of Eisner stories I really like, whimsical and pure fantasy.

Less than two months ago I did another posting with Eisner's Black X, in Pappy's #1212.

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Number 1212: Black Ace, Archie O. and Bozo

These stories from Smash Comics #4 (1939) have a rigid panel arrangement. It goes throughout the book. I wonder if it was to make the comic book originals look more like they came from newspaper comics, which had a set format, not the relative freedom of a comic book page. Will Eisner, who did the “Espionage starring Black Ace” strip could still set a mood, as he did later with the Spirit, but the page layout is ultimately self-limiting. It's no wonder other artists like Jack Kirby decided to use the whole page divided in a way to maximize the effect of the individual drawings.

To go along with this story, I've included a two-page humor strip by Eisner, "Archie O'Toole," which is immediately recognizable as being Eisner's by the beautiful dancing girl. Archie asks of her, "Can she shag?" which should cause you to chortle gleefully over the modern sexual implication. I looked it up, and the Shag was a popular swing dance from the 1920s to the 1940s. You can see a couple shagging if you go to this video,

Sandwiched between the two Will Eisner jobs is a George Brenner story, using the pseudonym Wayne Reid, of my favorite metal man, Bozo the Robot.

There's a racial caricature in this story. I apologize to readers who may be offended.

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Number 805

Bozo the 'bot

It's hard to take a robot named Bozo serious, but readers of Smash Comics did that from the first issue to #41, when he clanked off for the last time.

Bozo probably got his name from the West African Bozo tribe of Mali. The robot preceded Bozo the Clown. George Brenner, one of the first comic book men, created Bozo and his owner, Hugh Hazzard, using the pseudonym Wayne Reid. Brenner created the first masked comic book hero, the Clock, in 1936.

This is the origin story of Bozo, such as it is. It has stock elements like a mad scientist (driven mad by his "need for funds" as the newspaper headline says), Dr. Von Thorp, creator of Bozo. The hero who gets Bozo after the mad doctor is taken down is rich guy Hugh Hazzard, who fights crime on the side. I guess the idea of rich people in the 1930s--at least in comics and pulps--was that they were idle playboys who needed secret identities to be able to work.

Bozo is believed to be the first robot to be featured on the cover of a comic book, and who am I to argue? It also preceded the 1941 Fleischer Superman cartoon, "The Mechanical Monsters," flying robots, manipulated by remote control and used to steal jewels. Bozo was preceded by Adam Link, the artificial intelligence robot from the series by Eando Binder. Adam Link first appeared in Amazing Stories, dated January 1939.

From Smash Comics #1, 1939:

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Number 793

Un-Super Heroes Week: After Midnight comes the Marksman

This is the final posting for Pappy's Un-Super Heroes Week:

Midnight was created by Jack Cole at the behest of Quality Comics publisher, Everett "Busy" Arnold, just in case Will Eisner was killed in World War II. Because Eisner owned his own creation, The Spirit, Arnold ordered up a visual copy with Midnight. Eisner might have ground his teeth down in frustration over this blatant infringement, but those were extraordinary times. Coming out of the Depression, Eisner probably thought discretion over Arnold's actions trumped litigation. As it worked out, Midnight became a cover feature of Smash Comics, but was gone before the end of the 1940s. The Spirit earned money for Eisner over several decades. This story is well drawn by another of Eisner and Cole's contemporaries, Paul Gustavson.

Read more about Midnight here.

I've shown a Marksman story before, in Pappy's #342. The Marksman is a character who should probably have been killed on his first mission, standing out as he does in his white t-shirt and red cape. But he is of the comics, and during the war comic characters had their gimmicks that made them impervious to the enemy, because the writer wrote it that way!

I like the precise Fred Guardineer artwork, though, and especially his caricatures of the Axis gangstas. The splash panel is classic.

Both of these stories are from Smash Comics #43, 1943.

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