The Claw, big fellow that he is, is held captive with a large chain. He gets slipped some pills (you know they are for him because the name “The Claw” is on the pillbox) and is mysteriously free of the chains. What th--?! At the risk of spoiling it for you, the mystery of the disappearing chains is not solved, but we are told in the last panel that police are looking for “the Orientals who dropped mysterious pills into [the Claw’s] mouth — making his escape possible!”
Another cliffhanger. Now I must find Daredevil Comics #5 and continue the story. If I were you I would not hold my breath waiting, because when it comes to this blog and my memory, nothing is as certain as uncertainty.
Byline credit for Bob Wood, published in Daredevil Comics #4 (1941).
I guess that the Claw would be the Ninth Wonder of the World.
ReplyDeleteI guess that there isn't much point in critiquing this story as if it were adult fiction. It's essentially a wildly violent childern's fantasy. I believe that it would probably be seen to work quite well as just that, had the quality of illustration been better.
One of the things that bothered and bothers me about the treatment of Asian characters in comic books of the Golden Age is how their languages are represented, with crude, randomly configured gores of ink.
One of my side projects involves two comic-book characters who speak Chinese. If one doesn't know or bother to find-out what the Chinese means — if one treats it as squibbles and “ching chong” — then one doesn't understand how heroic, how often funny, and how touching these two characters are.