All American Comics #102 was the last issue before it turned into All American Western. It featured the first Johnny Thunder story, and the last stories featuring Green Lantern, Dr Mid-Nite, and Black Pirate, which I am showing today.
It was a good run for all of those characters, especially in the here today/gone tomorrow world of 1940s comic books.
Black Pirate appeared in three popular comics titles in his career. Created by Sheldon Moldoff, he first appeared in Action Comics #23, then switched to Sensation Comics beginning with issue #1. After 50 issues, he then moved over to All American Comics, bumping out The Atom. Not bad for a comic book character who never had his own book, or was on the cover of any issues of the comic books where he was a second tier feature.
I have read less than half a dozen adventures of Black Pirate, so I can’t give an opinion of how Jon Valor (Black Pirate’s secret identity) fared as a pirate, but in his final adventure he was inland, and rode away on a horse.
Artwork by Arthur Peddy and Bernard Sachs.
And so Justin is yet another sidekick whose name when disguised is the same as that when undisguised.
ReplyDeleteIt's already a bit much to launch a story with a chance-coïncidence that Our Hero stumbles upon a scene of mystery that will prove to be a scene of crime. Adding a doppelgänger reduces the plausibility still further.
Remove the chance-coïncidences, and we have the twist of a mill whose vanes turn against the wind. Interesting; but what, exactly, powered the mill? The Black Pirate was supposedly active in the last half of the 16th Century. That pretty much rules-out anything but wind, gravitation (as with water), and animals. I'm not sure that a plausible explanation could be generated, but doing so might have made the story praiseworthy.
Instead, essentially, the story has a MacGuffin, but it doesn't have a Cary Grant.
I just assumed the mill had a hidden water wheel.
ReplyDeleteWith the Black Pirate and Justin riding off on horses, I wonder if they were thinking of continuing the feature in All American Western?
Darci, water power is not impossible, but when water power were available, why would windmills have been built?
ReplyDeleteDaniel, that's a good question. At first glance, I thought there was only one mill. In that case, the explanation might be that water power for always available but not plentiful, whereas wind power was intermittent but more powerful. However, the splash page shows there was at least one more mill. Continuing with the same thought, perhaps the first mills were wind-powered only and proved to be unreliable. This mill, the most recently-built, tried adding a backup power supply. Apparently it wasn't effective, otherwise the villagers would have known about it. How's that for an explanation? (I don't know why the builder would ever have wanted to run the mill backward?)
ReplyDeleteDid real mills ever use a capstan or windlass as a backup?
Also, anyone able to place Ashenden?